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1. Imagination and vision.

2. Explores the possibility and potential of photovoltaics for shaping futures.

3. Consider positive & negative effects of solar energy on society, economy, and the environment.

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1. Demonstrates understanding of how photovoltaic systems work.

2. Includes knowledge of social aspects of PV design - including local and cultural knowledge.

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1. Explores how solar could impact people in a specific community.

2. Human society and energy systems are connected.

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1. Story is rooted in science.

2. Narrative form may be sci-fi (fiction), but the story must be based on scientific principles.

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How science really works...

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To understand what science is, just look around you. What do you see? Perhaps, your hand on the mouse, a computer screen, papers, ballpoint pens, the family cat, the sun shining through the window .... Science is, in one sense, our knowledge of all that — all the stuff that is in the universe: from the tiniest subatomic particles in a single atom of the metal in your computer's circuits, to the nuclear reactions that formed the immense ball of gas that is our sun, to the complex chemical interactions and electrical fluctuations within your own body that allow you to read and understand these words. But just as importantly, science is also a reliable process by which we learn about all that stuff in the universe. However, science is different from many other ways of learning because of the way it is done. Science relies on testing ideas with evidence gathered from the natural world. This website will help you learn more about science as a process of learning about the natural world and access the parts of science that affect your life.

Science helps satisfy the natural curiosity with which we are all born: why is the sky blue, how did the leopard get its spots, what is a solar eclipse? With science, we can answer such questions without resorting to magical explanations. And science can lead to technological advances, as well as helping us learn about enormously important and useful topics, such as our health, the environment, and natural hazards. Without science, the modern world would not be modern at all, and we still have much to learn. Millions of scientists all over the world are working to solve different parts of the puzzle of how the universe works, peering into its nooks and crannies, deploying their microscopes, telescopes, and other tools to unravel its secrets.

Science is complex and multi-faceted, but the most important characteristics of science are straightforward:

Science focuses exclusively on the natural world, and does not deal with supernatural explanations.

Science is a way of learning about what is in the natural world, how the natural world works, and how the natural world got to be the way it is. It is not simply a collection of facts; rather it is a path to understanding.

Scientists work in many different ways, but all science relies on testing ideas by figuring out what expectations are generated by an idea and making observations to find out whether those expectations hold true.

Accepted scientific ideas are reliable because they have been subjected to rigorous testing, but as new evidence is acquired and new perspectives emerge these ideas can be revised.

Science is a community endeavor. It relies on a system of checks and balances, which helps ensure that science moves in the direction of greater accuracy and understanding. This system is facilitated by diversity within the scientific community, which offers a broad range of perspectives on scientific ideas.

To many, science may seem like an arcane, ivory-towered institution — but that impression is based on a misunderstanding of science. In fact:

Science affects your life everyday in all sorts of different ways.

Science can be fun and is accessible to everyone.

You can apply an understanding of how science works to your everyday life.

Anyone can become a scientist — of the amateur or professional variety.

Where to begin?
Here are some places you may want to start your investigation:

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To understand what science is, just look around you. What do you see? Perhaps, your hand on the mouse, a computer screen, papers, ballpoint pens, the family cat, the sun shining through the window ....

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1. Artistic/aesthetic value.
2. Innovative use of the solar technology and/or implementation described your narrative.

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Continue to learn about how renewable energy systems work!

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Learn more about how renewable energy systems work!

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As solar cell manufacturing continues to grow at a record-setting pace, increasing demands are placed on universities to educate students on both the practical and theoretical aspects of photovoltaics. As a truly interdisciplinary field, young professionals must be fluent with the science, engineering, policy, and market dimensions of this technology, in the context of a growing renewable energy economy

The best way to contact the authors is to leave a comment. You will need to create an account but I can then reply to you and it will be seen by others. If you really must send me an email it's: [email protected] .

The feedback form is presently disabled due to spam.

The main resource on this site at the present is the PVCDROM:
>>>>>>>>> Enter the PVCDROM <<<<<<<<<<<<< >>>>>>>>> Ingrese PVCDROM en Español <<<<<<<<<<<<<

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As solar cell manufacturing continues to grow at a record-setting pace, increasing demands are placed on universities to educate students on both the practical and theoretical aspects of photovoltaics. As a truly interdisciplinary field, young professionals must be fluent with the science, engineering, policy, and market dimensions of this technology, in the context of a growing renewable energy economy The best way to contact the authors is to leave a comment.

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From S.O.A.R. Since 3040, an example of demonstrating understanding of solar energy:

"We had basic knowledge about solar flares and the only known tools that used solar panels were satellites in space, which were no longer available. Those only worked because optical reflectors concentrate the sunlight and have an integrated circuit that converts the electricity made from sunlight to radiofrequency energy that is transmitted through an attached antenna."

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Building Integrated Solar Energy Technologies

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Building Integrated Solar Energy Technologies

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8.2. Building Integrated Solar Energy Technologies

Solar energy conversion is a large topic. The key technologies to mention here include:

Photovoltaics (PV, optoelectronic systems) - convert solar visible radiation into electricity;

Concentrating Solar Power (CSP, solar thermal, or optocaloric systems) - convert solar thermal radiation into electricity;

Solar heating systems - utilize solar heat (concentrated or not) without conversion.

You can learn these technologies in depth taking some of the courses in the Solar Energy Option of RESS. Here in this lesson, we will turn to one of the application examples of PV technology to study the factors that affect the practical implementation of solar panels in buildings. But before doing that, let us review the basic principles by which photovoltaic systems operate.

PV Basics

Photovoltaic (PV) technology is one of the ways to convert solar resource into usable energy - specifically sunlight to electricity. Photovoltaic conversion is enabled by certain semiconductor materials, which have a property to generate electric current when they absorb incident photons. The physics of the photovoltaic effect can be schematically envisioned as three step process [Brownson, 2014]:

1. absorption of light;

2. generation of charge carriers (electrons and holes);

3. separation of charge carriers (so that they can perform work).

This effect is physically realized in certain semiconductor materials - for example, monocrystalline silicon, polycrystalline silicon, amorphous silicon, cadmium telluride, and copper indium gallium selenide/sulfide and some others, all of which can be potentially used for making the PV cells.

Watch These Videos as intro to PV cell technology and photovoltaic effect.

This first short video (2 min) provides an animated illustration of the photovoltaic effect:

The second video (5 min) explains some basic physics behind the photovoltaic effect in silicon solar cells:

Next, let us gather some more details on the structure, functions, parameters of the photovoltaic materials.

Reading Assignment:

The PVEducation website is very good articulating many technical aspects of photovoltaic systems. Although we do not intend to study the PV physics here in detail, definitely bookmark this website as a useful resource.
Spend no more than 1 hour browsing through this website and self-learn or refresh the PV technology background.
PV Application in Buildings

Current applications of solar photovoltaics are adapted to the following scales:

portable (small electronics - e.g., calculators, computers, etc.);

distributed power generation (homes, isolated equipment);

utility scale power (solar farms).

In the scale-up process, the single PV cells are combined to modules, and modules can be arranged into arrays:

In this lesson, we choose one of the applications - the building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) - for more detailed consideration as an interesting example of sustainable technology implementation.

The building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) are multifunctional materials that are both structure-supporting and power-generating at the same time. There are some advantages and challenges associated with this technology, which are summarized in table below:

Lower cost due to multi-functional nature of materials and due to more efficient design. Currently, PV contributes 0.5% to national energy demand; DOE expects it to reach 50% (!) with BIPV implemented.

System orientation, weatherability, durability are the factors that affect the system performance. Those parameters may be not easy to optimize if it is BIPV rather than add-on PV.

Improved aesthetics: panels are produced as facade lining, roof tiles, slates, shingles, windows (glazing, etc.).

BIPV modules can be heavier than regular building elements. Because of potential overload, new building standards and codes need to be in places to regulate this integration.

Thin-film PV can be applied directly to conventional building materials because the flexible and light.

BIPV modules are costly compared to regular add-on PV due to their multifunctional value, but that is not always recognized. BIPV is not mass-produced, but rather custom made, and that adds to the price.

Social acceptance: not many see long-term value because PV technology is thought to be soon outdated. There should be more acceptance from contractors and end-users alike.

Credit: Payton Chung via Flickr

While the main function of a conventional PV system is efficient power generation, the building integrated PV systems, which become the components of the building envelope must satisfy a number of additional requirements, such as:

appearance: color, image, size;

weather-tightness;

wind loading;

durability and maintenance;

safety during construction and in use (fire, electrical, structure stability);

cost.

In order to address all the necessary factors, the PV integration should be discussed early in the beginning of the design process. There are following PV integration options [Robert and Guariento, 2009]:

(a) Shading systems

These include louvers, either horizontal or vertical, which may be mounted outside the building over windows or balconies. Their function is to shade the windows from excessive light. The main issue with these structures is to make them resistant to wind load and easily accessible for maintenance. These subscreens can be made adjustable to maximize the sunlight gain.

(b) Rainscreen systems

Cladding panels can be used to protect the load-bearing external walls from rain water (especially masonry and concrete). PV panels can perform the function of such cladding and tiles. These structures are usually vertical. The ventilated cavity between the exterior cladding and the main wall help keep down the operating temperature of PV cells enhancing their performance and provide space for cables. PV rainscreens have moderate power output due to vertical orientation.

(c) Stick-system curtain walls

Curtain walls are used in those buildings that have internal columns or structural steel to support the main loads. Curtain walls are not weight-bearing and their main function is to resist air and moisture infiltration; also, building insulation is often attached to them (warm facade). A popular solution is to build the curtain walls from aluminum and steel framing filled with glass panels. PV panels can be sealed into curtain wall structures in both vision area or opaque area of the facade instead of regular glass.

(d) Unitized curtain walls

The unitized wall segments are pre-assembled at a factory and then are delivered to the building site. The controlled industrial environment provides more precision and quality for sealing the PV panels into the wall framework and making cable connections.

(e) Double-skin facades

Glass facades are often designed as "double-skin", i.e., when there is significant air space between the internal and external glass walls. This helps to reduce heat transfer losses through the walls. PV modules can be readily integrated into the external facade. Ventilation through the double-skin structure provides valuable cooling on the back of the panels.

(f) Atria and canopies

For the highest performance, PV are best integrated into horizontal or tilted elements, such as atria and canopies. These structures are usually free from overshadowing and are easy to ventilate. However, these structures may be more prone to heat transfer losses compared to plain opaque or insulated.

Supplemental Reading on BIPV technology:

Book: Robert, S. and Guariento, N., Building Integrated Photovoltaics. A Handbook, Birkhauser Verlag AG, 2009.

This handbook on BIPV technology (available online through PSU library) provides many details that are beyond the capacity of this course. If you have specific interest in this area of technology, you may find this book a useful resource.

NREL Report: Eiffert, P., Kiss, G.J., Building-Integrated Photovoltaic Designs for Commercial and Institutional Structure s" NREL, 2000

This report contains multiple examples of BIPV design, which complement the description of this technology.

Lifecycle Considerations

One of the main reasons why solar PV systems are being developed is their potential to replace fossil fuel combustion in power generation. While economically, fossil fuels are proved to be profitable, there is a sustainability concern (coal, oil, and gas will run out eventually) and there is an environmental concern (combustion pollutes and contributes to the greenhouse effect on earth). The solar PV can potentially address both of these concerns.

Because, unlike fossil fuels, solar energy is virtually unlimited, PV seems to be a perfect solution from the standpoint of energy sustainability. (Sunlight will not run out any time soon).

From the standpoint of environmental protection, the main question is whether or not the environmental benefit of reducing CO ₂ emissions achieved through the use of the solar systems will offset the impact of possible toxic emissions from the manufacturing of the solar modules and potential land pollution from the disposal of those systems at the end of their lifetime.

Let us make some rough estimations of the environmental benefit of PV technology. Consider the following example.

Example
Question: How much CO₂ emissions will be mitigated by employing PV for electric power generation?
The European Photovoltaic Industry Association predicted that by 2030 the implemented PV units will be able to produce 2,646 TWh of electricity annually worldwide. This roughly accounts for 9% of the total population's needs.

Imagine this amount of energy to be produced by burning coal instead:

The general reaction of carbon combustion is: C(coal) + O ₂ = CO ₂

We know that the average coal energy content is ~24 MJ/kg.

We also know that the average efficiency of coal-fired power plants is ~33%, so, roughly, we need three times as much energy generated by coal combustion for obtaining the specified amount of electric energy:

Energy by combustion = Target electric energy / 0.33

To unify the units, convert the global PV energy to joules: 2,646 TWh = 9.53 × 10 18 J

So, the energy we would need to generate through coal combustion is:

9.53 × 10 18 J / 0.33 = 2.89 × 10 ¹⁹ J

Now, we can find how much coal we need to generate this amount of energy by dividing the amount of energy by coal energy content:

Amount of coal needed = 2.89 × 10 19 J / 24 × 10 6 J = 1.2 × 10 ¹² kg (=1200 million ton)

Now, based on the assumed 95% content of carbon in the coal (let us consider anthracite coal), we calculate the amount of pure carbon burnt in the process:

1.2 × 10 ¹² × 0.95 = 1.14 × 10 ¹² kg C

Because for each mole of carbon in the coal, there is 1 mole of CO ₂ produced, we can find the amount of CO ₂, taking into account the molar masses of the components - C 12 g/mol and CO ₂ 44 g/mol, as follows:

Amount of CO ₂ released = 1.14 × 10 ¹² kg × (44/12) = 4.18 × 10 ¹² kg CO ₂ (= 4180 Tg CO ₂)

This quite substantial mass of CO ₂ will not be released to the atmosphere due to the operation of the PV systems around the world. Let us compare this number to the total global CO ₂ emissions, currently estimated at 31,350 Tg CO ₂ [IEA Statistics, 2012]

4,180 / 31,350 × 100% = 13.3%

This is the fraction of CO ₂ emissions that would be prevented due to employment of PV technology (if it is employed as predicted by the European Photovoltaic Industry Association).

We should also remember that PV is only one of the promising renewable technologies on the list. All of those technologies are locale-sensitive and therefore will complement each other in global power generation. Localization of technologies by resource would also help reduce energy expenditures and emissions from transportation.

The above example demonstrates the scale of the benefit. Now, let us look at the other side of the medal. The accelerated growth of PV system manufacturing and use will have to become a major market and also should have infrastructure for maintenance and disposal of vast amount of PV-related components. While PV panels are considered are relatively durable with a long projected service life, high volume annual turnover of such systems can be expected. Here, we can do another estimation exercise.

Example
Questions:

How many solar panels would be needed in the fossil fuel free economy?

How many panels would need to be replaced and disposed off each year?

Precise analysis is hardly possible, since we cannot predict the market trends and know for sure which renewable technologies will be major in the distant future. So, we just create a hypothetical case with a few assumptions:

Assumption 1: There are no more fossil fuels left, so all energy has to come from renewable sources.

Assumption 2: Global energy demand is split evenly among the six major technologies: solar PV, solar thermal, wind, geothermal, hydro-power, and biomass. This is probably unrealistic, but let us take it as a starting point for simplicity. In this case, PV power generation has to cover 1/6 of the total energy demand.

Assumption 3: The total global energy demand is 13 TW of power (this is currently estimated value, which we will use in this example): 13 TW → 4.1 × 10 ²⁰ J (per year)

Then, the fraction of energy that has to come from PV is:

1/6 × 4.1 × 10 20 = 6.833 × 10 ¹⁹ J (per year)

Let us consider 250 W silicon monocrystalline panels (64 x 39 x 1.57 in size; 44 lb (20 kg) in weight) as the main functional unit for this estimation.

If the panels are installed at a favorable location, we can take the measured output of 1200 kWh per kW of capacity per year. This is a typical output factor for the locations with favorable insolation [Vanek and Albright, 2008]. To explain this a little better: the nominal capacity of the solar system (250 W in this case) indicates the system output at full insolation; but the system does not operate at full insolation all the time (due to varying sun position and seasons). So, instead of the theoretically possible maximum output of 2190 kWh, the system produces only 1200 kWh per year. This value can be empirically estimated and is termed "regional factor".

Then, we can find how much energy this panel will produce per year:

1200 (kWh/kW) x 0.25 kW = 300 kWh (= 1.08 × 10 ⁹ J)

Finally, we divide the total energy demand by the unit panel output to find # panels:

Number of panels required = 6.833 × 10 ¹⁹ J / 1.08 × 10 ⁹ J = 6.327 × 10 ¹⁰

63 billion panels (!) is many, but if we divide this number by current living population (~ 7.7 billion), we get 8.2 panels per person, which seems quite reasonable.

To answer the second question, let us make the following assumption:

Assumption 4: The panel lifetime is assumed to be 50 years.

In this case, 1/50 of all panels will need to be replaced each year:

63/50 = 1.26 billion panels

If all this decommissioned equipment is simply disposed off, the total volume of waste generated per year will range up to 8.1 × 10 ⁷ m ³. If this waste in deposited in 20 m high dump, it would cover the area of 4.05 km ². (That means, the dump will cover the area of my home town in 9 years.)

The above-illustrated issue of waste disposal associated with the proliferation of the current PV technology calls for further development of solar cell design. The following improvements will be needed:

development of thin, low volume solar elements;

increasing efficiency of energy conversion to minimize the size of systems;

designing cells for recyclable turn-over and conservation of valuable materials;

using low-toxicity chemicals and materials in manufacturing;

creating infrastructure for lifecycle management.

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8.2. Building Integrated Solar Energy Technologies

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Solar energy conversion is a large topic. The key technologies to mention here include: Photovoltaics (PV, optoelectronic systems) - convert solar visible radiation into electricity; Concentrating Solar Power (CSP, solar thermal, or optocaloric systems) - convert solar thermal radiation into electricity; Solar heating systems - utilize solar heat (concentrated or not) without conversion.

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From The Future of New Solar Cell Trees, an example of demonstrating understanding of solar energy:

"Like the root system of a plant, solar cell trees can transmit surplus energy underground and convert them to other types of energy. That energy is then stored underground and could be converted back to heat or electricity when demand is high. This type of underground storage acts like root nodules of a plant. It reduces the energy loss during long distance transmission and removes the intermittent issues of solar energy. The underground storage could be in the form of a small battery device or an insulated water tank."

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You can check out the Future Narrative Winners at the link.

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This year, virtual PVSC held two competitions for middle and high school students: a Solar Energy Video Pitch, and a Future Narratives competition. You can read the original call for submissions at the bottom of this page. Find below information on the winners, judges, as well as the opportunity to read some of the entries and watch some of the videos.

Solar Energy Video Pitches Winners

First place: Solar4Students: School Pavilions. Alyssa Dora Cortez & Jawed Nur. Incoming 12th graders from Bioscience High School, Phoenix Arizona.

Second place: Hybrid Solar Panels. Jasmin Martinez Castillo. Incoming Junior for Bioscience High School, Phoenix Arizona.

Third place: Everlasting. Yash and Veer Pahwa. Yash is in 12th grade and Veer is in 9th grade at Tower Hill School, in Wilmington DE.

Honorary Mentions:

Makin' it Photovoltaic. Faith Skinner and Andrew Kallai. Faith and Andrew are rising 12th graders at Appoquinimink High School in Middletown, DE.

Aqualidad. Maryan Robledo. Maryan is a rising Junior at Bioscience High School, in Phoenix AZ.

Future Narrative Winners

First place: Bon City. Jazmine Cordon. Jazmine is an incoming 9th grader from Sevilla West Middle School. Jazmine's submission has also an accompanying video to the narrative.

Second place: Sincerely, Maisy. Bonnie Law & Mallory Creveling. Bonnie and Mallory are 7th graders at Gunning Bedford Middle School, in New Castle DE

Third place:

Honorary Mentions:

Sponsors
Thank you to IEEE and Electron Devices Society (EDS) for sponsoring this event. If you're interested in sponsoring this event, view our sponsoring opportunities in each year's PVSC Website under Exhibit/Sponsorship.
Mentors and Teachers
We are very grateful for those involved in organizing this event, and mentoring some of the students. This year, also big kudos go to the parents of many of the contestants.

Judges
Many thanks to all our Fabulous Judges. Thanks to them, each student received full feedback on their entries, with 8 to 10 reviews from educators, national labs and industry. The interaction between students and the established PVSC community is very important for engaging and fostering the new generations of solar warriors, dreaming of photovoltaic solutions.

* Ember McCall - QESST RET, Teacher in Phoenix High School Union District
* Marcela Campbell - QESST RET, Teacher in Tempe High School District
* Ruth Anderson - QESST RET, Teacher at Alhambra Elementary School District
* Tamra Smith - QESST RET, Teacher at Alhambra Elementary School District
* LaVerne Tijerina - QESST RET, Teacher at Alhambra Elementary School District
* Janet Ankrum - QESST RET, Teacher at Alhambra Elementary School District
* Rebecca Glaudell - QESST Caltech Grad. Student
* Nicholas Valdes - QESST Grad. Student UDEL
* Austin Kuba - QESST Grad. Student UDEL
* Stefi Weisburd - QESST UNM Educator
* Tiffany Rybiski - QESST ASU Educator
* Daniel Lepkowski - Grad. OSU
* Zak H Blumer - Grad. OSU
* Jeremiah McNatt - NASA
* Laura Spinella - NREL
* Dr. Vishal Sharma - NREL, Fulbright Climate Fellow
* Taylor Moot - NREL
* Mark Mikofski - DNVGL Industry Scientist

About the Middle & High School Competition
The competition is a cornerstone event of PVSC, providing students in Middle and High Schools the opportunity to create a solar energy project and showcase it during the conference. This year, PVSC was held virtually and the format was modified to a solar energy video pitch, and a future narratives competition. Next year, these remote options will be kept as a way to showcase STEAM and engage students from many locations, but the build/experiment portion is expected to come back for PVSC 2021.

For more information on the Middle & High School competition, to participate, to sponsor, or to become partner with us if you're in education, outreach or similar-goal groups in solar or energy, contact us to SolarYouthScholars@ieee-pvsc.org.

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fundamentals and new concepts for future technologies

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cigs and cdte thin film solar cells and related materials

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advances in characterization of photovoltaics

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pv velocity forum:  accelerating the pv economy

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This year, virtual PVSC held two competitions for middle and high school students: a Solar Energy Video Pitch, and a Future Narratives competition. You can read the original call for submissions at the bottom of this page. Find below information on the winners, judges, as well as the opportunity to read some of the entries and watch some of the videos.

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You are showing what you know about photovoltaics and the possibility of a solar future through a story. So, consider your writing, too!

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It might help you write your solar future narrative.

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In this guide, we will discuss everything you need to know about storyboards.

1. What is a storyboard?

2. Why you need a storyboard

3. How storyboarding can help your business

4. How to create a storyboard

5. Go-to storyboard checklist

6. Popular storyboarding methods

7. Helpful storyboarding tips

8. Popular storyboarding software

9. Create storyboards with Vyond

Let's dive in:
When you make a video for your business, be it an explainer video, marketing video, sales video, microlearning video, or any short online business video, planning is extremely important. And one of the most important stages of planning out your video is creating a storyboard.

What is a storyboard?

A storyboard is a graphic representation of how your video will unfold, shot by shot. It's made up of a number of squares with illustrations or pictures representing each shot, with notes about what's going on in the scene and what's being said in the script during that shot. Think of it as sort of a comic book version of your script.

A storyboard is your roadmap when you make a video. Like a script, your storyboard visually guides you throughout the production process. By planning your video, you know which shots you need to create and how to create them when filming begins. You can get others' feedback early on and make simple adjustments to your storyboard, rather than making major changes while filming.

To make a good storyboard, you don't need to be a visual artist (though you can be). A storyboard can be anything from comic book-like rough sketches to stick figures to computer-generated drawings. To help you plan your own video, we'll walk through the basics of creating storyboards, including:

The basic elements of every storyboard

A breakdown of two popular storyboarding methods

Understanding different ways to storyboard, you'll be set to visually plan your own video. Regardless of your budget or design experience, you'll be able to create a clear map that seamlessly guides you through production.
Try Vyond for Free
Why do you need a storyboard

Creating a storyboard might just sound like an extra step in the process of making a video, but trust us, it's a step you won't want to ignore. Here are three reasons why you need a storyboard:

Best way to share your vision

A visual aid makes it much easier for you to share and explain your vision for your video with others.

We've all had experiences where we were trying to explain something and the other person just can't see our vision. The core of this issue is that most stakeholders don't have the experience of visualizing something off of a text deliverable, such as a script.

With a storyboard, you can show people exactly how your video is going to be mapped out and what it will look like. This makes it infinitely easier for other people to understand your idea.

Makes production much easier

When you storyboard a video you're setting up a plan for production, including all the shots you'll need, the order that they'll be laid out, and how the visuals will interact with the script.

The video storyboard is a starting point or suggested through line around which you can plan your coverage (all the angles you will shoot of a scene). This really comes in handy when you're making your video, as it ensures you won't forget any scenes and helps you piece together the video according to your vision.

Saves you time

While it may take you a little while to put your storyboard together, in the long run, it will save you time in revisions later. Not only will it help you explain your vision to your team, but it will also make the creation process go more smoothly.

How storyboarding can help your business

Storyboarding can also help you:

Get buy-in from stakeholders: While a script can help others conceptualize your video, the visual nature of a storyboard is often a more effective way to bring it to life in pre-production. Sharing your storyboard early on in the process will ensure collaborators and decision-makers understand your vision - and make them much less likely to put up a fight down the line.

Streamline production: Creating storyboards forces you to work out a lot of the details of your videos ahead of time - what shots you want, what order they'll go in, what props or tools you need, etc. Storyboarding might also help you realize if you're missing a key piece of logic or dialogue in your script, or whether your visuals tie together as cohesively as you thought. Identifying and working through these problems before you start creating your video will prevent wasted effort later on.

Save time: It's much easier and less time-consuming to make revisions to a storyboard than to a video.

How to create a storyboard

Ultimately, a storyboard is a series of images representing each frame of your video. How you put the storyboard together, and how much detail you add, is up to you - you can do it on paper, in a word processing program, or using specialized software.

Here's how to go about creating a storyboard for your video:

1) Create blank slides

The first step in creating a storyboard is to draw a series of squares on a piece of paper

Here's an example of a blank storyboard:
Download this free storyboard template: US Letter | A4
You can also find tons of printable storyboard templates on Google). And here are more template options to help organize your frames. Don't worry about your drawing skills - stick figures will suffice. Just make sure to leave room to jot down the accompanying text (whether it appears on the screen or is spoken by your characters or narrator) for each visual.

Creating a PowerPoint deck or simple word processing document on the computer is another easy option. Specialized software is also available if you're looking for a more comprehensive solution (check out a few options below).

Think of these squares as the video frame. In each square, a different shot or scene will take place. You can sketch the scenes by hand, create them on a computer, or even take photographs. Make sure to leave space to write notes and lines from the script beneath or next to each frame.

2) Add your script

Beneath each picture, write the lines from the script that will be spoken in that scene and jot down some notes about what is happening.

Your storyboard should read like a comic book, so readers (coworkers, clients, etc.) can get a sense of exactly what will happen in your video.

Read more about scripting for microlearning videos. These tips can also be applied to different types of videos.

3) Sketch your story

Next, you should sketch how each scene will look visually. Note that your storyboard doesn't have to be incredibly detailed - you don't have to draw in all of the props or even use color. (Hint: You don't have to be great at drawing either. Bad drawings are far better than no drawings at all.)

Just provide enough visual detail to give an impression of what is happening, which characters are in the scene, and what the general framing will look like. The script and notes will help fill in the rest of the details.

You can also make notes about camera angles and movement, transitions between shots, and other details that will come in handy during production and post-production.

Not everyone has the time or skill for such storyboards, but this level of detail is especially helpful for complex projects with a variety of stakeholders.

Whatever method you choose, be sure that your storyboard conveys what's happening in the frame, the setting, which characters are present, any essential props, and what text (if any) will appear on the screen and where. You can also include important notes about camera angles and movements, transitions between shots, and any other production or post-production details.

If you're creating an extensive training program with multiple microlearning videos, consider completing the scripts and storyboards for each unit before beginning production on your videos. This will ensure that all the major topics you want to hit are covered and that the videos fit together logically with minimal repetition.

As you storyboard, keep each video's objective top of mind, and don't be afraid to make revisions. This early stage of the process is the best time to tweak your visuals and script in order to create the most compelling and effective microlearning video possible.

Once your storyboard is approved, you're finally ready to create a video! Read on for tips for creating an animated microlearning video.

Go-to storyboard checklist

Whether they're drawn by an artist or diagrammed on a computer, all storyboards share the same information. They need to touch on the main actions, speech, and effects in every shot to clearly communicate how a video will appear.

Here are the key elements that every storyboard should include:

Shot images: Individual panels featuring 2D drawings to show what's happening-actions, characters-throughout a video

Shot number: The number indicating when a shot appears according to a video's shot list

Action: The primary activity happening in a shot

Dialogue (or narration: Any speech that is heard throughout a video

FX: Technical details that explain how the shot is created in production and post-production (e.g. aspect ratio, camera angles, camera movement, shot type, sound effects, special effects)

A full storyboard has all of the information necessary to imagine how your finished video will appear. Reviewing your images and notes for each shot, you and your team can brainstorm how your video should be adjusted and what resources you will need in production.

Popular storyboarding methods

When most people hear the word "storyboard," they think of a professional animator quickly sketching out a cartoon feature film.

As it turns out, a storyboard doesn't have to be a work of art-it doesn't even have to be hand-drawn. With video production software, there are options for all types of users-regardless of their industry, design experience, or budget-to create useful professional-grade storyboards.

Hand-drawn storyboards

The classic storyboarding process is drawing by hand. You sketch out a mock-up of what each shot will look like.

As mentioned, you don't need to be a great artist to create a storyboard-stick figures are enough. The principal goal is to convey the main action that is happening in the shot, so each frame doesn't need to be very detailed.

A longhand storyboard cuts costs, but it's not necessarily the most efficient option, as seen in these pros and cons:

If you hope to keep video costs low, a hand-drawn storyboard is probably the best method for you. Just keep in mind that you will need to devote at least a few hours, if not more, to complete the task, and you'll need to scan or make copies for everyone working on your video.

Helpful storyboarding tips

Here are some tips that can help you:

Show, don't tell. Use the storyboard as a litmus test to determine if your story is truly being visualized.

Be cinematic. Does your video do things that movies do? Do people, places, and things move or stand still? Does the camera move? Keep these factors in mind and bring them all together to create a cinematic video.

Make sure it's logical and coherent. You're creating a story, so the video should look visually consistent from beginning to end

Pick a theme. If you want to create a video infographic, add relevant charts and graphs. If you want to highlight a customer's pain point, show a character on screen and take them through a journey.

Include all relevant details. Break up your script into smaller chunks and make note of important information:

What is the setting or background for the scene?

Is there a character on the screen? If so, what action is the character performing?

What props are in the scene? This should fit in with the context of the background/setting you're using

Will any text appear on the screen? What is the size, color, and position of the text?

What message are you trying to deliver?

Popular storyboarding software

People with less time to hand-draw frames and/or larger budgets may opt to use specialized software. These programs are built with robust customization and automation features to help you quickly create your storyboards.

Here are a few options to consider for creating your storyboards:

STORYBOARDTHAT

Price: Free and premium plans starting at $9.99/month

Main features: Equipped with a large image library and a drag-and-drop interface. Characters and scenes are customizable.

STUDIOBINDER

MakeStoryboard

SHOTPRO

STORYBOARDER

VYOND

With any of these tools, there are a few pros and cons to consider.
While these tools are powerful, many organizations don't need these features to create their storyboards. Only companies with elaborate videos and full production teams need to create these hyper-detailed storyboards with specialized software.

Create storyboards with Vyond

Vyond allows people of all skill levels in all industries and job roles to create dynamic and powerful media. With features that go beyond moving text and images, you can build storyboards, character-driven stories, or compelling data visualizations that engage audiences and deliver results.

Start making your own videos and storyboards today. Sign up for a free 14-day trial and attend our weekly tour of Vyond Studio.
Start a Free Trial

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What Is A Storyboard & How Do You Create One? (With Video)

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Storyboards are fundamental when creating videos. Here are our favorite tools, tips, and tricks for creating a storyboard on your own.

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Make sure to do your research! You want to make a narrative that is engaging and accurate.

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Learn about the impacts solar energy can have on our society.

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The technological innovation of solar energy enables solar panels to capture the heat of the sun and utilize the energy to generate power and electricity for homes, buildings and cities. Solar panels help maximize the earth's resources and conserve energy. However, many social benefits can result from the use of solar energy in the United States.

When cities or companies decide to build and operate solar energy facilities, the projects often help to create numerous jobs. For instance, workers are needed to plan the project, develop and implement the project, build the solar energy plant, manage the equipment and operate the facility. Thus, many new jobs can be fulfilled by workers as a result of a city or state using solar energy facilities to generate electricity for the area, and this would in turn help decrease the unemployment rate of the given area.

There are many ways in which the use of solar energy can help stimulate the economy of the affected areas and of the US. With more people able to find employment as a result of the increased number of jobs created by the development and operation of solar energy panels, more people would have money to contribute the the nation's economy. Also, manufacturing solar energy is less expensive than burning fossil fuels, which is the traditional method of generating electricity. Thus, if businesses or households decide to use solar energy to power electricity in their homes or buildings, their electric bills can be substantially less than if they use energy generated from fossil fuels. Over an extended period of time the financial difference of cheaper electric bills can become quite significant, enabling families and businesses to inject more of their money into the economy.

Generating energy from solar panels emits very little pollution into the air, and thus solar energy is a much cleaner source of energy than the burning of fossil fuels. Cities or areas that decide to use solar energy to power the buildings would thus enjoy a cleaner quality of air in the region, which in turn can make the citizens and workers in the area more healthy. Furthermore, studies indicate that burning fossil fuels helps facilitate global warming. However, because solar panels emit very low amount of hazardous pollution into the air, solar energy does not damage the atmosphere or cause global warming. Thus, if areas decide to use solar energy to generate electricity, the shift will help diminish the effects of global warming, such as the sea levels rising and storms intensifying.

In the United States, factories that burn fossil fuels to generate energy and power for homes and businesses rely on oil to generate the energy. As a result, the US is dependent on oil that often comes from foreign nations to create the electricity, and sometimes the money the US pays for foreign oil is used to harbor or support terrorism. However, if the US adopted policies and implemented more solar energy programs, not as much oil would be needed in the country and thus the amount that the US purchases from foreign nations would be reduced. Therefore, the dependence for foreign oil would be diminished if more households and companies used solar energy to generate electricity instead of fossil fuels.

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The technological innovation of solar energy enables solar panels to capture the heat of the sun and utilize the energy to generate power and electricity for homes, buildings and cities. Solar panels help maximize the earth's resources and conserve energy. However, many social benefits can result from the use of solar energy in the United States.

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Solar power's prospects become brighter each day.

One way to flip that light switch even higher is community solar, in which local neighborhoods or villages share ownership of a solar power system. At our second Frontiers in the Environment "Big Questions" talk October 7, IonE resident fellow Kathryn Milun, a professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota Duluth, presented the case for this renewable energy approach in "Why Do We Need Community Solar?"

Here are six things we learned:

1. Today's energy system is not set up for solar. Milun said she finds it hard to believe that investor-owned utility companies - with their existing investments centered on coal plants and natural gas - will readily and willingly embrace solar power. To keep global warming below 2 °C, we'll need to keep carbon emissions under 886 gigatons for 2000-2050, which means we must move quickly on solar and other renewables. The problem: Companies have already claimed and added to their asset ledgers more than three times that much carbon in untapped coal, oil and gas reserves. Without big pressure, Milun says, the private sector won't do what needs to be done. Even when private companies do build solar power plants, she says, they sometimes do so at scales and in ways that alienate local communities, take out precious farmland and damage local ecosystems.

2. Community solar can be part of the solution. Community solar - where communities own the multiple benefits of solar - is a useful mechanism for overcoming these challenges. There are many ways to make sure the many benefits of solar are accessible to communities: having federal energy assistance dollars for low-income households go directly to local solar providers rather than to large utilities invested in fossil fuels, for instance, or creating new financing programs that allow small-scale solar producers to sell their electricity in renewable energy markets. Milun proposes using the legal tool of trust ownership, which allows community-embedded entities - churches, existing community land trusts, other nonprofits - to manage solar for the benefit of a local community. In India, for example, the group Gram Oorja sets up photovoltaic systems in local villages that allow the villagers to be owners and managers (trustees) of the system and its many benefits.

3. Community solar can help low-income communities. A George Washington Solar Institute working paper concluded that if poor communities throughout the U.S. had access to community solar, they'd see billions of dollars in new economic activity and an extra 138,000 jobs. A neighborhood that owns its own photovoltaic system through a community trust can use the income stream produced through electricity sales to support long-term projects, such as a shaded outdoor gathering place, a community garden or an annual festival.

4. Consider culture. Community solar's strength, according to Milun, lies in its drive to fit solar into people's broader value system. Accordingly, mass-produced process won't work; instead, solar projects should be customized for local communities. In Brazil, social entrepreneur Fabio Rosa got solar units into the hands of villagers, but saw that people didn't always care for the equipment well. He overcame that obstacle by including a small clay saint statue with every unit, which fit solar into the symbolic system of Brazil's Catholic culture and allowed people to better recognize the value of this new technology.

5. Space and place affect solar. Geography matters, and it's more than the culture and climate of a location. Milun is designing and building community trust-owned solar projects - Solar Commons - in both Minnesota and Arizona, and she noted that differences between the two states (different laws, different attitudes, different energy grids) underscore the importance of tailoring solar to its local context. When solar panels are installed in Arizona parks, for example, they can be designed to create shade, a cool commodity in the state's hot climate.

6. Public art helps paint solar in a new light. Milun noted that community solar projects can use art "to make visible the public nature of energy production." Our electric grid uses public rights of way; our coal and gas plants use the planetary public expanse of our atmosphere. Milun's Solar Commons project uses the photovoltaic system as a way to "make public" the relationship between our energy landscape and our common home, the Earth. In one Solar Commons proposal, for instance, an architect assembled solar panels to fit the form of a dragonfly, bending technology to fit nature. When community members collaborate to create art for their community Solar Commons installation, they not only get a stake in solar's success, but are educated about the environment, too.

Watch the video of "Why Do We Need Community Solar?"

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6 things we learned about the power of community solar - Institute on the Environment

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Solar power's prospects become brighter each day. One way to flip that light switch even higher is community solar, in which local neighborhoods or villages share ownership of a solar power system. At our second Frontiers in the Environment "Big Questions" talk October 7, IonE resident fellow Kathryn Milun, a professor of anthropology at the ...

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Learn about how technology shared resources are embedded in our  value systems!

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Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota

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Learn about the value and benefits of solar energy electricity systems.

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This webinar explores why rooftop solar is a net benefit to all utility customers.

Solar electricity is good for everyone. For solar panel owners, it lowers monthly electric bills, increases home value, and provides energy independence. Beyond individual solar owners, solar electricity also benefits society at large, creating local jobs, generating local wealth, improving energy security, and improving public health. Solar also benefits the entire electric grid. The brilliant tangle of wires, poles, substations, and meters that we call "the grid" is made stronger, cheaper, and more efficient thanks to distributed solar energy (like rooftop solar panels). This translates to long term savings for all ratepayers. Given the countless benefits that solar provides, what is its value? And how do we ensure that the full suite of benefits provided by solar energy is reflected in its price?

These are the questions central to the debate around the value of solar. Utilities have traditionally compensated solar electricity generated by homes and businesses at the retail electricity rate (i.e. the same rate you pay the utility for electricity). Thanks to net metering, most solar owners are credited at the full retail rate for the solar electricity they feed back onto the grid (when it's not needed in the home). Valuing solar electricity at the retail rate has allowed solar owners to directly offset their monthly electric bills with the electricity they produce, translating to major savings. However, as we become more sophisticated at tracking and measuring the different benefits provided by solar, many solar advocates are asking themselves whether this valuation scheme is accurately reflecting the full value of solar. Given that solar benefits everyone, are solar owners compensated fairly for the solar electricity they produce?

The values and benefits of solar electricity

The value of solar debate happening across the country is focused on precisely this issue. It's true that solar panels produce electricity, which has a financial value that solar owners can access to reduce their electric bills. But what about the value of that electricity to communities, local businesses, public health, employment, and energy security? The main benefits produced by solar fall into the following categories:

Direct benefits to solar owners: When a homeowner or business owner installs solar panels, they generate their own solar electricity. This electricity offsets the electricity they must purchase from their utility, resulting in lower monthly electric bills. In addition to these savings, going solar at your home increases your home's value when you go to sell your house. What's more, many states offer monetary Renewable Energy Credits for solar electricity (separate from your electric bill savings), generating a little extra revenue for solar owners.

Job creation: Thousands of solar workers are involved in helping homes and businesses go solar. From panel factory employees to salespeople to electricians to installers, the solar industry now employs more than 250,000 Americans full time. Thanks to homeowners and businesses installing solar panels, all 50 states now have a solar workforce.

Public health benefits: Solar electricity does not generate pollution, requires no water, and creates no hazardous waste. The more solar electricity we generate, the less pollution, water shortages, and contamination crises we face. These benefits accrue to everyone, not just solar owners. So, whether it's coming from rooftops or large solar farms, solar electricity is a win for public health.

Energy Security: With zero fuel inputs, solar is a more secure power source than coal or natural gas. Because there is no need to worry about fuel shortages, everyone benefits from stable power prices. Relying on home-grown solar power instead of imports also means we are less impacted by events in other countries. This protects our military personnel and translates to enormous savings for electricity consumers across the country.

Improving the electric grid: When more solar electricity is generated, the whole electric grid works smarter, stronger, and more efficiently. Solar is now the cheapest form of power. So, more solar - regardless of where it's generated or who is generating it - leads to lower prices for every single utility customer. And that's especially true of distributed solar installations such as rooftop solar panels and small-scale commercial installations. On-site distributed solar generation reduces the need to transmit electricity over long distances from distant power plants. So more solar panels means less wear and tear on the grid, lower maintenance costs, and fewer expensive utility upgrades. These savings are shared among all ratepayers.

Who receives the benefits of solar?

Beyond the direct bill savings that accrue just to solar owners, solar electricity benefits everyone. More solar jobs are good for all Americans; less air pollution improves the health of all Americans; homegrown energy improves national security; and a better-functioning electric grid means cheaper, more reliable power for everyone. Sadly, solar opponents often ignore these widespread benefits. In a deliberate attempt to slow the growth of solar, many of these opponents - from monopoly utilities to fossil fuel companies - claim that solar only benefits those people with the resources to install panels on their own roof. That couldn't be farther from the truth. And, thanks to emerging valuation efforts, we now have the tools to quantify the value solar energy provides to society at large.

Measuring the value of solar

In dozens of states, energy regulators are undertaking processes to quantify the value solar electricity provides to state residents and the state's electric system. This undertaking is widely referred to as a "value of solar" study. Different states are attempting to quantify the "value of solar" for different reasons: to create a more precise compensation mechanism for solar generation; to combat solar opponents' false claims that solar only benefits its direct owners; or to develop more accurate information for policymakers. In the most extreme cases, some state regulators have undertaken these studies in response to utility attempts to devalue solar and exaggerate its costs. And it's not just the traditionally pro-solar states doing it. From Minnesota to Maine, New York to Oregon, blue states, red states, rural states, and urban states have recognized the importance of quantifying the value of solar energy generated in their backyards.

The vast majority of these studies have concluded the same thing. Solar is undervalued by retail rate net metering alone.

In other words, the retail rate credit that solar owners receive for the electricity they produce actually low balls the real value of that electricity. The graph below compares estimates from several studies. The vast majority found the value of solar to be greater than the retail electricity rate. For example, the Public Utilities Commission of Maine found that the true value of solar is close to $0.35 per kWh. Maine's retail rate of electricity hovers around $0.15 per kWh. So, in this case, the value of solar electricity in Maine is more than twice the regular retail value of electricity. That means solar owners are putting twice as much value onto the grid as they're being compensated for via net metering.

The outcomes of value of solar undertakings are twofold: to create a financial estimate of the actual value of solar electricity, and to develop a methodology to measure that value moving forward. In efforts that have yielded the former (an actual financial value), you can often see variation in the solar value estimate based on who conducted the study. Of the 11 studies highlighted below, the only ones that estimated the value of solar electricity to be less than the value of retail electricity were commissioned by utilities. As more value of solar studies and proceedings are initiated across the country, it's important to keep in mind who is doing them and their vested interests in their outcome.

Compensating solar owners for the full value of their solar electricity

Solar energy provides benefits and value to the entire grid, not just to solar owners. Thanks to state value of solar studies, we now have the data to prove it. Knowing that solar provides more benefits than its owners are compensated for, and that solar owners provide a net benefit to society, how can we ensure that solar owners get fairly compensated for the electricity they produce?

Traditionally, solar owners have been compensated through retail rate net metering. This means they get credit for the electricity they produce at the same retail rate at which they pay for utility electricity. But, as states discover that the value of solar is greater than the retail rate, many are designing new rate structures that better reflect the full value of solar electricity. From time of use rates in California to new value of solar rates in New York, these experiments are looking into new ways to ensure solar owners receive credit for the full, real value of the electricity they produce.

Resources

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This webinar explores why rooftop solar is a net benefit to all utility customers. Solar electricity is good for everyone. For solar panel owners, it lowers monthly electric bills, increases home value, and provides energy independence. Beyond individual solar owners, solar electricity also benefits society at large, creating local jobs, generating local wealth, improving energy [...]

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Solar-Powered Tent to Tackle Homelessness

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Solar-Powered Tent to Tackle Homelessness

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Read about how this girl-powered team of engineers created a solar-powered tent!

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More than 500,000 people in the U.S. experience homeless on any given night - poverty, racial disparity and the opioid crisis are among the main causes. But with many shelters only providing a brief roof over their heads, many are left in desperate need.

A group of girls at San Fernando High School in Los Angeles wants to change that.

Twelve students there teamed up with DIY Girls, an organization supporting girls in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, to create solar-powered tents for the homeless that can fold into a backpack for easy travel. The project forced the students to learn how to code, solder - and sew.

"[There was] a lot of Googling," says Daniela Orozco, who was a senior at San Fernando when the project began.

Over the course of four years, Orozco tells Here & Now's Robin Young she saw how homelessness in the area had gotten worse.

"When I first started high school, there would probably be like one homeless person living under the freeway by our school, whereas in our senior year, there were multiple tents," says Orozco, who herself grew up in a low-income family and is now a sophomore at Stanford University studying mechanical engineering. "Homelessness was definitely something that was close to our own hearts."

Evelyn Gomez, former executive and program director for DIY Girls who now serves as a board member, graduated from San Fernando in 2006 and went on to study engineering at MIT and UCLA. When she heard about efforts at her alma mater to help girls learn about STEM, she knew she wanted to pitch in.

"I really wanted the girls to have this empowering experience where their voices and their skills could be put to help people," Gomez says. "Actually I went back to my high school calculus teacher and I asked her if she could help me put a team together, and I was able to do a hands-on project with the girls and really tell them about the possibility of inventing something that no one has ever thought of before, nobody has ever seen before."
On how the tent was designed, and the group's goals with the project
Daniela Orozco: "The tent itself, when we were designing it, we wanted to make sure that it was easily portable and lightweight, along with being able to have the solar panel box. So on the box itself there are solar panels, and that solar panel is connected to an Arduino board, and that Arduino board was coded such that when a button was pressed, you can turn on the LED lights and the UVC lights to disinfect the inside of the tent. The solar panel itself is connected to a battery pack on the inside of the box."

"Our main goal is to get it patented. But we wanted to make sure that it gets in the right hands and it's properly distributed to the homeless."
Daniela Orozco

Evelyn Gomez: "We want this to be used for good intentions. It is capable of helping refugees that are displaced from their homes. It has the potential to help a lot of different people."
On there not being enough young women, and especially young Hispanic women, in STEM fields
Gomez: "I know in my own education, through undergraduate and graduate school, I was often the only Hispanic person in the room. And it makes a big difference and a big impression to somebody to see somebody that looks like you, a role model in front of you, that has done something that's hard, like engineering. I think it allows you to see yourself in that position.

"I think it really places a big burden on your shoulders: I'm not just representing myself, I'm representing my people, I'm representing my community, and if I say something that maybe ... doesn't make sense, then that's going to reflect poorly on them. That's the beauty of having an all-girl team and having the beauty of working within our own community: We have no one else to turn to for answers. We need to come up with the answers ourselves. It's very empowering."
Orozco, on what it was like to have Gomez blaze a trail as a Hispanic woman from her high school who went into engineering
Orozco: "It was very inspiring, and realizing that someone from my community was able to do it makes me push myself and be like, 'OK, Evelyn did it. You can do it, too,' or, 'Many of the other mentors we had did it. I can do it, too.' "
Marcelle Hutchins produced this interview and edited it for broadcast with Peter O'Dowd. Jack Mitchell adapted it for the web.

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Teenage Team Of Girl Engineers Designs Solar-Powered Tent To Tackle Homelessness

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More than 500,000 people in the U.S. experience homeless on any given night - poverty, racial disparity and the opioid crisis are among the main causes. But with many shelters only providing a brief roof over their heads, many are left in desperate need.

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from Past Video Submission by Alyssa Cortez

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This video was uploaded via the SPLtrak General Video Upload System.

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Learn some tips and tricks to creative writing from the experts in this art! The link is in pink. :)

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Boost Creativity and Improve Your Creative Writing

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Boost Creativity and Improve Your Creative Writing

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Learn some tips on how to nurture your creativity! The link is in pink. :)

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Practice your creative writing skills with this fun plot generator from Squibler!

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Plot Generator with 500+ Short Story Ideas

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Automatically generate a story plot for film or paperback using keywords of your choice. Never run out of short stories ideas with this writing prompt generator.

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Resources for SolarPunk - a community movement that aims for positive, sustainable futures

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Resources for SolarPunk - a community movement that aims for positive, sustainable futures

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Read about where elements of SolarPunk are seen in popular media that you may know!

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"We use the water, wind and sun
To make our homes and gadgets run
Where else can you have such fun, environmentally?!"

Solarpunk is a genre of Speculative Fiction that focuses on craftsmanship, community, and technology powered by renewable energy, wrapped up in a coating of Art Nouveau blended with African and Asian aesthetics. It envisions a free and egalitarian world with a slight bend toward social anarchism. Standing as both a reaction to the nihilism of Cyberpunk and a solution to a lot of the problems we face in the world, Solar punk works look toward a brighter future ("solar") while deliberately subverting the systems that keep that brighter future from happening ("punk").

The genre was coined on Tumblr in 2014 when a single post swept bloggers into an excited frenzy.

Other aspects of Solarpunk include a quasi- Utopian setting, usually 20 Minutes into the Future, with the occasional Crystal Spires and Togas and even sometimes Beast Men ( Biologically/ genetically engineered or not) to add weirdness or other unwanted proposed elements. Like the Tumblr community that fostered the genre, Solarpunk also tends to feature a high level of cultural awareness, gender equality, self-expression, and artfulness. Likely to combine lighter and more utopic versions of Biopunk, Oceanpunk and Skypunk themes, randomly set in the near/far future (rarely in the far past), with realistic (sci-)fantastic elements. Solarpunk works usually believe in Science Is Good, as the marriage of nature and technology is what leads to such a utopic setting. Perhaps as a consequence of this view of science, some Solar Punk works have begun to feature Fusion Power; by harnessing the power of the stars, fusion power allows Solar Punk to make the impossible possible in a clean and green way.

Compare and contrast with Post-Cyberpunk, which saw the Cyberpunk movement and came to different conclusions. Post-Cyberpunk accepts the world we have and the systems that support it like corporate globalization, industrialization, and exploiting resources in slightly-less-bad ways. Meanwhile, Solar Punk aims to subvert those systems and replace them with ones that work better in the long-term through local communities, supporting artisans, and living sustainably.

Like any budding genre, the number of works is still low; it's already been remarked that there's a lot more sci-fi classics retroactively labeled as Solar Punk than those which were consciously written to follow the trend. As far as we here at TVT are concerned, it's enough for the moment if they contain important Solar Punk elements. Let us leave genre distinction debates to others and feel free to add examples for either of these.

A helpful intro to the whole concept can be found here .

Solar punk fiction can include elements of mundane science fiction. For example, Nina Munteanu says that her solarpunk novel A Diary in the Age of Water includes elements of mundane science fiction to add the "gritty realism of "the mundane" to the story.

Compare to Pastoral Science Fiction, Reclaimed by Nature. In some ways Solarpunk has looped back to a version of the Crystal Spires and Togas that Cyberpunk was originally rebelling against in the first place.

Examples:

"Dear Alice" features an advanced, futuristic society in which technology and nature exist in harmony with each other.

The Sandman (1989): In the first storyline of the Spin-Off The Dreaming, Cain and Abel visit various utopian realms including "Ecotopia", a high-tech world based on windmills and solar towers, and blending into the countryside.

The Ecorium concept of Philip Sibbering's Warhammer 40,000 fanfiction, or at least their "present day" M41 incarnation, are a dark deconstruction of this trope, illustrating how the basic principles of Solarpunk can easily serve dystopic ends. They are sustainable environments run entirely by renewable energies, designed to meet every community need... which are sealed away completely from the outside world in colossal, Gothic structures to prevent nuclear attack. Most of their inhabitants eke out a dismal existence reminiscent of medieval peasants, and it's explicitly stated that the vast, vast majority of their inhabitants will never see the Sun, or even go outside unless they're conscripted into the Imperial Guard. Considering the fact that they were first mentioned in his site in 2007, years before the Solarpunk manifesto of 2014, (and conceived at least a decade before the Manifesto) it might even be an Unbuilt Trope.

Interestingly enough, Sibbering himself discussed the relationship of Solarpunk and the Ecorium in response to this very entry, noting how Dark Age of Technology-era Ecoriums were much closer to vanilla Solarpunk before the Age of Strife and the rise of the Imperium of Man, and that early incarnations of them in fact had elaborate facades and even rooftop gardens.

In the Coreline story Coreline: Invasion of Portland, it's revealed that the city of Portland, Oregon in the Coreline universe was transformed by the Vanishing into a forest-like city. This was also done as a nod to the city's real life progressivism on environmental issues.

Lies of omission: While his parents want Peter to do research into ferrofluids to advance Aphelion's space-program, Peter wants to use it to help break down ocean-plastics, something Tony is perfectly willing to let him do in his company.

Treasure Planet features a blend of Victorian and Art Nouveau styles with futuristic technology powered by solar sails.

: As the credits roll, we see that the newly-returned humans build a society that's a lot healthier for themselves and the world.

is a subversion. The city of Zootopia itself appears to fit the aesthetic to Judy from the outside, with its beautiful architecture, sprawling design and districts environmentally controlled through advanced civil engineering. However, Judy discovers upon moving there that the city is actually just a standard city with a few green trappings, with a corrupt capitalistic democracy that systemically supports racial prejudice, stereotyping, and political corruption, in addition to a violent criminal underworld. It just doesn't look that way from the outside.

has some Solarpunk elements to it, being set in a high-tech, egalitarian version of San Francisco that the blends American and Japanese architecture. Much of the technology is very Solarpunk in nature, emphasizing clean energy and societal improvement with things like flying wind-power generators or robotic nurses. The "subverting the system" part, however, gets some Deconstruction, as Corrupt Corporate Exectutive turns out to actually just be a normal guy guilty of nothing more than foolishly rushing an experiment, and the protagonists are put on the wrong trail expressly because of their bias against him. Meanwhile, the real Big Bad is the sort of angry, anti-corporate rebel most Solarpunk stories would support, except that he rebels not from genuine moral outrage, but out of vengeful spite over the accidental loss of his daughter.

Beasts of the Southern Wild: The film starts with a local teacher warning about global warming and the rising sea levels, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. The people in the Bathtub refuse to let a levee ruin their way of life, so they break it down. Then the city government forcibly removes them from the Bathtub, so they rebel even more. The film is steeped in environmentalism, anti-authoritarian characters, but the Bathtub manages to retain a sense of happiness with their way of life.

Black Panther (2018): Wakanda is an Afrofuturist paradise, thanks to its abundance of vibranium. The major conflict of the movie boils down to whether Wakanda should be doing more to share their resources and technology to help the world, which they ultimately opt to do. The design of Wakanda has many elements commonly seen in solarpunk, such as vertical gardens, renewable and nonpolluting energy in the form of vibranium, and high tech in naturalistic and simple forms .(Afrofuturism and Solarpunk as movements are quite friendly due to the mutual focus on better, more equal, and diverse futures and often share themes or outright crossover.) However, it differs from being completely solarpunk specifically in that Wakanda is a stratified society with monarchical government and a standing army, with leadership specifically determined (potentially) through acts of horrific violence.

At the end of , Gabe Law is sent to an idyllic world with a green civilization where he meets the dimensional counterpart of his wife, who had been killed earlier in the film.

The Summer Prince features a blend of tech and tradition in the tropics of a future Brazil.

Wings of Renewal, an anthology of dragon-themed Solarpunk short stories.

Ursula K. Le Guin's Always Coming Home—which is set in a distant and seemingly postapocalyptic future—is written as an ethnography of the Kesh culture, whose agrarian (athough they've got Internet...in a book written in the '80s) classless society is depicted in sharp contrast with the warlike, stratified, and expansionist Dayao.

In Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, the Earthseed ideoology employs a lot of garden metaphors along with actually encouraging its adherents to garden. (When you consider that Earthseed was born in part out of resource scarcity, both of the above make sense.)

Joe Kimball's 2011 novel Timecaster has some proto-solarpunk elements. The setting is a demi-utopian, biofuel-driven future in which virtually every available surface is used for gardening; it's also a Free-Love Future whose politics are projected from present-day progressivism. However, the implications of this are contrary to solarpunk's natural-fiber aesthetic and to some aspects of its focus on craftsmanship. Because the demand for biofuel is so great, making durable goods or luxury consumables out of natural materials is seen as wasteful; wooden furniture is rare, paper is against the law, and even historical artworks are supposed to be gathered up and converted into fuel.
Among other things making you question how "utopian" it is, is within the first few chapters they manage to explain that there is a weekly tax on biofuel with usage strictly measured (paid either in credits or in plant production, usually weed), that you can't even kill a raccoon on your land because of endangered species laws, obnoxious clogged traffic, that the beer is artificial and comes only in pill form, and people who want to be able to vote and use electricity are chipped with GPS tracking (resulting in about every city having populations of disenfranchised).

Many stories by Arthur C. Clarke contain such background elements as distributed countryside living made possible by advances in robotics and communication technology, with advanced industry tastefully unobtrusive and out of sight.
The short story "Sunjammer", aka "The Wind from the Sun", describes a race between solar sail spacecraft.

Poul Anderson's Maurai use solar power along with wind and wave power to provide energy for their civilization. The last book in the series, Orion Shall Rise, includes the Domain of Skyholm whose capital is in a solar powered dirigible aerostat.

The novel "Songs from the Stars" by Norman Spinrad features a society called Aquaria that runs on "White Science" and only uses renewable energy, accepting "the law of muscle, sun, wind, and water" as its technological foundation. Notable for its portrayal of flying bicycles. The plot, naturally, involves a conspiracy by practitioners of Black Science to bring back forbidden energy sources and also to revive the space program.

Gerard K. O'Niell's 1981 futurist non-fiction book, 2081: A Hopeful View of the Human Future, posited a society with elements that fall somewhere between a Zeerusty "World of Tomorrow" a la Disneyland and this trope.

The novella "Miles Past Xanadu" (and subsequent Novel-Length Expansion "Wheelers") by Matt Stephens is focused almost exclusively on a sub-culture of people who leave the cities of a near-ruined world to restore the ecosystem on their own, supporting themselves and creating communities of their own according to a far more Solarpunk philosophy.

Pacific Edge, by Kim Stanley Robinson, posits this as one possible future for Southern California.

Devolution is set in Greenloop, a technologically advanced green commune in the Cascade Mountains that seeks to make this trope reality. However, the novel quickly proves to be a Deconstruction of the movement; the commune is too reliant on bleeding-edge technology, being totally dependent on the sort of industrial supply chains they claim to hate to practice their lifestyle. The inhabitants are mostly naive rich people and sheltered political activists with little to none of the wilderness experience it would take to actually live in harmony with nature, and are thus totally unprepared for its dangers, such as natural disasters or aggressive animals.

In Obi-Wan Kenobi, Princess Leia's home planet of Alderaan is depicted in this manner, with lots of green spaces even in the cities, no visible pollution, and a peaceful society with no weapons.

Porter Robinson's sophomore album, nurture, takes heavy music inspiration from this aesthetic, featuring a form of Indie Pop that combines aspects of glitchy Noise Pop with subtle, folk-inspired acoustic instruments. Much of the album's branding fuses futuristic elements with the warm, gentle ambience of nature, with the music video to "Musician" taking place in a very solarpunk-themed city, featuring robots, skyscrapers, and technology of varying generations intertwined with lush greenery and bright blue skies.

The /tg/-created RPG setting CATastrophe combines this aesthetic with Ocean Punk, After the End, and Little Bit Beastly.

Magic: The Gathering has the plane of Kaladesh, where the technology is directly influenced by the wildlife. It helps that the technology is based on Aether,note which is a relatively green power source for its cities.

On the City-Plane of Ravnica, both the Selesnya Conclave and Simic Combine use this aesthetic, blending nature with civilization, the former focused more on aesthetics and the latter more on bio-engineering.

As of Neon Dynasty, the Japanese inspired setting of Kamigawa has progressed technologically to Cyberpunk levels. However, spirits and nature are respected and diplomats are actually used to negotiate the will of kami in regards to technology.

In Solarpunk Futures , players use (backcasting) and modified consensus to collectively 'remember' the stories of how their Ancestors built a social ecological Utopia.

The cities and palaces in the forest part of the nation Sumeru in Genshin Impact is heavily solarpunk themed since the nation's main element is Dendro and the Forest Watchers' job in the nation is to protect Sumeru's forests.

In Sonic the Hedgehog CD, traveling back to the past and destroying the robot generators found in the first two Zones of each Round will prevent the Bad Future where the environment is corrupted into a Polluted Wasteland. This leads to a new timeline where widespread technology works in harmony with nature to create a lush and vibrant Good Future devoid of Badniks.

Numbani, the "City of Harmony" and Robot player Orisa in Overwatch, featuring curved bronze skyscrapers ◊ and African tribal decorations, where humans and robots live together in peace.
The actual game itself takes place approximately thirty years after a failed robotic uprising dubbed "The Omnic Crisis", so it did take sometime being a Cyberpunk-like atmospherenote until it eventually evolved into the Post-Cyberpunk/Solarpunk-like setting as we see in-game over the last few years.

In Anno 2070, part of the AnnoDomini series, the Eden Initiative, or Ecos, are an environmentally-focused faction, and a more developed city built for them with look like this trope, in contrast to the more severe style of architecture favoured by their corpocratic rivals, the Global Trust. The Ecos favour wind and solar power, wood and glass architecture, and even seem to have a healthier diet and general lifestyle than the Trust.

Pokémon is a version of this. There's light industry, powered either through mundane renewable resources or Pokémon, but also vast swaths of virtually untouched nature in between. The most popular form of travel besides the Pokémon themselves is the bicycle.

Probably the best example and counterexample of this trope in Pokémon is in Sinnoh.

Played Straight: First, you have Floaroma Town, a quaint breezy town in the middle of a flower meadow right next to a small wind farm. Then you also get Sunyshore City, which is a relatively-unindustrialized coastal city with massive two-storey roads built completely out of solar panels, which help power things like the city's lighthouse and the local Pokemon Gym.

Averted, however, by Oreburgh Town, one of the first settlements you visit in the Sinnoh games, whose economy relies almost completely on coal mining operations, which is even maintained by the local Gym Leader. This is the natural antithesis to Solar Punk. However, given that it hosts the first Gym and Sunyshore has the last one, the game's progression gives off the impression of society evolving towards solarpunk.

Fortree City is also a good representative of Solar Punk's aesthetic, being a small city built completely in the woods to the point that many of them live in tree houses connected via wooden bridges crossing the city. The entire city is completely green, just like the best Solar Punk imagery. It doesn't meet the sci-fi technology aspect of Solar Punk though, leaning a bit too heavily on the rustic side.

While pollution exists in the setting, it's also somewhat mitigated by certain Pokemon who can consume garbage or smog such as Muk or the Galarian version of Weezing (the latter of which is capable of turning factory smog into clean air).

Final Fantasy XIV:

The city state of Gridania and surrounding settlements follow this trope to the letter, down to the natural looking Art Deco buildings blending into the hills and the forest that surrounds the area. (The forest is aptly named the Black Shroud as the trees are so massive they can completely block the light from reaching the ground.) Gridania's main source of energy is a group of massive waterwheels fed by the multiple rivers surrounding the city.

However, this is an Enforced Trope as the elementals that guard the Black Shroud will destroy the city if anyone dares overstep the line. (It already happened in the past, when the first Hyur and Elezen attempted to settle there, being forced underground to escape the vengeance of the Elementals.) Specially attuned Hyur known as Padjal are speakers for the Elementals, keeping their wrath at bay while enforcing their orders to appease them, which can sometimes appear as draconic. For example, while hunting for food is acceptable and profitable to the city due to its leatherworking industry, poaching is punishable by death.

It's also notable that of the three main city states, Gridania is the one holding the line against the invasion of the expansionist and villainous Garlean Empire and their Magitek weapons.

Fisherman's Horizon in Final Fantasy VIII. Although the name invokes a rural fishing village, it is in fact made up of recycled and repurposed industrial equipment and the Mayor's House is located in the middle of a huge solar array. The citizens are engineers, even those that don't look the part. Although the main game portrays them as Obstructionist Pacifist people, an optional and easily missed sidequestnote reveals they were once engineers from the highly advanced Esthar city that were disgusted by its use of their technology for war and thus left to found Fisherman's Horizon, fulfilling the "punk" part of "solarpunk."

: The Firelights' base is built around an enormous tree thriving in the depths of the city, a symbol of resilience in the dark of the underground and perhaps the only organic source of clean air in Zaun. Building joyful, technological communities intertwined with nature is at the heart of the aesthetics of Solarpunk, while the fact that their community focuses on art, mutual aid, and community defense against Silco and the encroaching shimmer epidemic speaks to the somewhat anarchistic social side of solar punk sensibilities. Between the glimmering Steampunk of Piltover and the grungy Biopunk of most of Zaun, the Firelights are a haven for those tired of exploitation by both sides.

: Solar panels, holographic screens and remote-controlled drones coexist alongside wooden buildings, stone statues, boats made from giant conchs and wind turbines embedded into the scenery. Many characters show strong environmental concern and conflict regularly arises from the fact that some drone manufacturers do not care that they use polluting technology.

In the finale of the inhabitants of Lothal banish the Empire, which has been exploiting both the Star Wars Rebels, people and the planet for decades. After a seven-year Time Skip, it's shown that the planet has fully recovered and the capital is a Shining City with beautiful white towers and non-polluting technology, while art and spirituality (both suppressed under the Empire) are allowed to bloom.

: have some traits of this trope: most of the cities in the magical dimension seems to work like this thanks to their magitek with Linphea, Flora's kingdom, being a noticeable example (rather than have buildings covered in plants, they build houses in HUGE trees)

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Solarpunk is a genre of Speculative Fiction that focuses on craftsmanship, community, and technology powered by renewable energy, wrapped up in a coating of Art Nouveau blended with African and Asian aesthetics. It envisions a free and ...

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Here you can see the influence of SolarPunk in many ways.

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We've all heard of Steampunk and Cyberpunk. Their iconic styles and bold images have always distinguished those who choose to stand apart from the status quo. In fact, Cyberpunk has become one of the most popular subcultures ever with the release of blockbuster movies like Blade Runner 2047 and the recent blockbuster video game Cyberpunk 2077. Both these movements grew in prominence in the 1980s and their presence is felt to this day. However, with the turn of the century, it's time for a new subculture to emerge: Solarpunk.

Like any punk culture, Solarpunk was born out of anti-establishment sentiment. The movement, at its heart, is centered around the environment and sustainability. Its name is quite literally derived from the potential of solar poweras a form of renewable and sustainable energy. Solar energy has become the most widely used form of renewable energy, and the optimism of a new world where we live in harmony with nature instead of destroying it drives what Solarpunk is truly about. Instead of doom and gloom, the movement chooses to envision a utopian society. Despite the horrors we see on the news everyday, Solarpunks choose to believe in hope, hope for a better future for all.

Solarpunk.net writes, "We are starved for visions of the future that will sustain us, and give us something to hope for, ideas of life beyond the rusted chrome of yestermorrow or nightmare realms of radiated men eating the flesh of other radiated men".

And so, the main ethos of this movement lies in finding solutions to achieve consistent and sustainable progress as opposed to painting terrifying pictures of the future we may inherit. How Solarpunk hopes to find solutions for a healthier planet diverges from how we live today - but perhaps not in the ways you may think. Rather than fixating on the potential doom and gloom of the future - which only leads to unproductive panic - Solarpunk has a clear emphasis on solutions. As seen in New York, a clock was reprogrammed to countdown the time until climate change effects hit a point of no return for humanity. While this may not have led to direct change, it did make headlines. Its reveal led to uproar for and against the need for such a blatant display of the inevitable. Perhaps all that energy may have brought about change had it been geared towards environmental progress.

Solarpunk has given rise to a community that seeks to redirect all that negative energy into solutions for a better world. This beautiful, new, sustainable, and egalitarian vision for the world is reflected in all things Solarpunk, from clothes, architecture, and music to politics, technology, and community.

Solarpunk Aesthetic

Ask anyone who knows punk culture and they'll tell you its defining trait is always the distinctive imagery. Where ideology may get lost within the constant buzz of the internet community, aesthetics help to attract and hold the attention of the masses. Arguably, visuals have never been more important than they are today, with our attention spans only getting shorter as technology gets faster.

Paris 2050 - Vincent Callebaut Architectures

When one thinks of Cyberpunk, the image that comes to mind is a dystopic concrete jungle with dark and bleak coloring, whereas steampunk has a reputation for Victorian styles and visible machinery. So then, what makes up Solarpunk aesthetic? Well, picture a green future, where plants grow freely, coexisting with human architecture of natural colors and stained-glass windows. It is a society that isn't trying to tear down what we have already built - but rather incorporates sustainability into the world we already have.

The Solarpunk aesthetic is heavily influenced by Art Nouveau visually. Art Nouveau is a form of art that was characterized by its use of organic and sinuous lines. It was meant to break away from historic imitation, and hence create a new style. In the same way, Solarpunk attempts to break away from popular dystopic themes that have informed punk culture for the past century. While Solarpunk does not shy away from colors in the style of Art Noveau, it does drift towards muted tones. The inspiration comes from, you guessed it, nature's colors. Thus, earthy tones and soft colors outline the aesthetic of Solarpunk visuals. From architecture to fashion, the color palate strays towards gentle shades that work along with the natural setting.

When you look at images reflecting Solarpunk aesthetics, it is not unheard of to feel a sense of balance and calm overtake you. What else would you expect from a movement grounded in optimism? The images convey a world that "could be" - that is, if we worked in tandem with nature instead of exploiting it.

Solarpunk Fashion

Ah, fashion. Cyberpunk had trench coats and shiny black leather while steampunk became synonymous with waistcoats and visible gears and screws. The punk movement fashion is what makes it stand out within a sea of ideas. Though the ideology of past movements is not as commonplace anymore, their fashion lives on in pop culture and continues to influence styles of the general population.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CD6a3UQHi-X/

True to its organic and free-living message, Solarpunk seeks to incorporate comfort and functional style into its fashion aesthetic. Though light and loose-fitting garments form the image of Solarpunk fashion, the main takeaway is responsible sourcing. It is encouraged to repair and repurpose items instead of the constant cycle of disposing and replacing them.

The simplest way to partake in Solarpunk fashion? Thrifting. Which is a simple, inexpensive way for anyone to integrate Solarpunk fashion into their lives. The idea is simple: think about the sustainability of your garments before you make a purchase.

Fast fashion may be trendy, but peek behind the fashionable curtains and you'll find a whole mess of hidden skeletons. The rampant exploitation of humans and nature to stay ahead of the curve is not only wrong but unsustainable. The cost of production appears low today because no one is paying attention to how much it'll cost to clean up climate change - if any cleanup happens at all.

This is everything Solarpunk stands against. Fashion can be expressive yet sustainable. Though Solarpunk fashion has come to be associated with more earthy or floral tones to reflect nature's colors, its core message lies in sustainability. It is not restricted by any set rule; you can still be expressive in your sense of style as long as you consider its cost.

Solarpunk Architecture

One of the major conflicts that has arisen with modern developments is the current architecture versus nature argument. Currently, civilization exists at the expense of the environment. Forest reserves are being disestablished to make way for the skyscrapers that now dominate our skylines. So much so that "concrete jungle" has taken on a more literal meaning.

Singapore's Changi Airport

However, this conflict is not a thing in Solarpunk's utopic vision. Instead, Solarpunk architecture makes a point to incorporate nature into our existing structures. This movement has no intention of tearing down the walls of skyscrapers and returning to days of extreme labor and modest living, but rather to focus on the art of modern architecture working symbiotically with nature.

One of the simplest ways homeowners can do this is by installing solar panels on their rooftops. One might even argue that skyscrapers are the best-suited architecture for this initiative seeing as they receive a large amount of sun exposure. Plus, such a large building is bound to be consuming a lot of power, which could and should be coming from a sustainable source.

Now, what if solar panels are a little out of your price range right now? Don't worry, Solarpunk is a large community with spaces for people from all walks of life. Unsurprisingly, nature motifs play a part in Solarpunk architecture. You could incorporate hanging gardens or nature-inspired structures into your living, as so many buildings have started to do recently. The green and grey don't have to be separated. For example, the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore and the Golden Bridge in Vietnam both exhibit the Solarpunk vision.

In a world dominated by shades of grey, Solarpunk reimagines the future where colors and architecture are amalgamated to be in balance with nature. Since Art Nouveau is the inspiration at heart, glass and metal are the go-to materials to form bold and elaborate architecture. Think of stained-glass windows that direct sunlight to light up interiors with beautiful colors. It is nature made even more beautiful by the hands of humans, which is exactly what Solarpunk visualizes when painting the future.

Solarpunk Technology

When we think of anti-establishment, it's easy to think of technology as inherently evil or detrimental to the environment. Yet, if it is a future utopia we are chasing, then there has to be space for technology. Solarpunk's vision of moving to renewable energy cannot happen without the technological advances of this age. And as technology continues to advance, humanity will be able to conceptualize more ways to harness energy.

Windmill Bridge - Vincent Callebaut Architectures

Modernization is not the enemy in Solarpunk culture. There is an understanding that one cannot exist without the other. The Solarpunk motto of "doing" rather than "watching" effectively pushes and advocates for the use of technology to ensure sustainable sourcing.

So let's have a look at some ways technology has come in line with what Solarpunk envisions for us. Solar grids, wind turbines, hydroelectricity and other renewable energy are just a few. With Norway producing 98% of its energy from renewable sources and renewable energy surpassing traditional sources in electricity production in Germany, the Solarpunk ideology is not radical and far-fetched. In fact, these countries show us that the vision is attainable if we choose to pursue it.

On a micro-scale, technology has become one of the more wasteful aspects of modern society. The rise in usage and production of smart gadgets and handphones could not have been predicted just two decades ago. Uncontrolled capitalism has led to rife competition between companies to produce the next big thing. Products are being released and replaced at an unprecedented pace. Everyday items are no longer made to be long-lasting, forcing consumers to keep purchasing new ones as companies chase their bottom line. This is one of the reasons Solarpunk has adopted an anti-capitalist stance.

If we are to overcome this new consumerism and save our future, the world is going to have to practice some mindful buying. More than that, companies will need to start producing products that last longer and are ethically sourced. Technology is an integral part of our future and Solarpunk does not want you to give up your smartphones. The choices made with the technology that we have is what will form the kind of utopia that Solarpunk envisions - not an iPhone in the bin.

Solarpunk Politics

This piece wouldn't be complete without a politics section, would it? Like any punk movement, political thought plays a role in securing Solarpunk's vision for the future. The envisioned future may be bright and shiny, but to get there, radical progress is necessary. Arguably, a not so pretty path to a utopian future.

In the current political climate, it is safe to say that Solarpunk ideology leans heavily towards leftist beliefs. Where else would you find a community that actively opposes fascism and capitalist culture while emphasizing the fight for equality? In Trump's America, Solarpunk firmly pushed back against his fascist remarks. It is a movement that believes in active engagement in politics. Solarpunks employ diverse tactics including but not limited to voting and demonstrating.

While Solarpunk does not advocate the use of violence, it doesn't shy away from it when needed for self-defense and against enemies with extreme intentions. The thought of more aggressive actions to achieve environmental justice is starting to gain traction. Recent political movements have demonstrated that even though peaceful protests help, sometimes harsher measures are necessary for a better future. With frustrations mounting against governments who continue to cater to oil producers and logging companies, environmentalists are primed to take a more aggressive approach to push forward an agenda that might just save us all.

In comparison to other punk communities that prefer to adopt more fictional narratives - such as Cyberpunk, Steampunk, and especially Dreampunk - The Solarpunk community errs on the side of reality. The very real looming threat of climate change has played a role in this. A blog post from 2008 put it best: "A major difference between Solarpunk and steampunk is that Solarpunk ideas, and Solarpunk technologies, need not remain imaginary..."

Solarpunk is a symptom of resistance. It exists because the current political order has failed to address a very real threat against humanity. However, what makes the Solarpunk resistance even more special is the way it has influenced traditional protests. Wherein most issues people may not have the power to shape the future they want, in Solarpunk, resistance may come in simple but manageable ways. From refusing to engage in the capitalist culture of instant purchases with a short shelf life to the reuse of existing infrastructures in creative ways, Solarpunk allows progress to take place within the resistance. Though larger powers at play may have bigger impacts on the movement's vision, people get to make contributions in their own meaningful ways.

Solarpunk Music

Though Solarpunk does not have a defined or outlined genre of music, some artists have been founded on its ideology. Tonzi, a performance artist from Canada, wanted to create a Solarpunk Village. She had a 3-year plan of music projects to solarize said village. There was also a band called Sieudiver that released a track titled " Solarpunk City ".

Though Solarpunk does not have a specific genre of music associated with it, nature sounds and field recordings - with a touch of techno - has been used to describe it. The music leans more towards instrumentals and soothing melodies. Ambient nature samples with an undertone of techno beats combine both aspects of Solarpunk. Nature and technology cooperating to create something new and beautiful.

The Solarpunk community is a creative lot who have compiled playlists of sounds that represent their movement, which can be found on multiple platforms such as YouTube and Spotify. The Solarpunk sound can be described as tranquil trance music. Soft beats on top of a soothing melody make this music easy to listen to while doing any tasks. Literally the perfect background playlist as you fight the system and save the planet.

Solarpunk Movies

Most punk movements have left lasting impressions on pop culture. Ahead of its time, Blade Runner is considered the most influential cinematic Cyberpunk film. On the other hand, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, though it may not sound like it, is one of the more recent appraised Steampunk films. Furthermore, the classic '60s series Wild Wild West was a pioneering example of Steampunk in film/TV (although it's probably best that we forget about the terrible 1999 movie adaptation that starred Will Smith).

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Solarpunk is still new, and so we might not be seeing a notable influence until much later. Though there haven't been any direct references to Solarpunk in pop culture, there have been movies created where their ideology is apparent.

The most famous recent example would be one of Marvel's most celebrated releases, Black Panther. The nation of Wakanda is perhaps the closest depiction of what a Solarpunk utopia would look like. When the film was released, there were many discussions surrounding the utopian land it portrayed. People respected each other and valued nature, which created a harmony that we don't see today. Evidently, a direct contrast to our modern cities. The Solarpunk community hailed the movie for showcasing what the future could look like if progress was made instead of talked about. Traditional living existed side by side with the most innovative technological advancement. It is no surprise that Blank Panther has managed to transcend through multiple communities. Wakanda presents a city where technological advancement can exceed anything we've seen before without the destruction of our environment or humanity.

On the other hand, if you enjoy animated films, nothing fits the Solarpunk aesthetic more than Studio Ghibli films. With stories centered around the harmony between humans and nature set in the most idyllic backgrounds, these movies may help bring an understanding to the conversation around Solarpunk. Inspired by true stories and literature, these movies have strong messages that are subtly shown and easy to digest by any audience. It is a studio that has managed to insert life lessons into a carefully curated story wrapped in enchanting visuals. The colors of Studio Ghibli movies are vibrant and soft. Moreover, these stories almost always wrap up in a neat and satisfying ending, reflecting of the warm and utopic vision of the Solarpunk community. Among these movies, the ones that truly stand out and represent the Solarpunk ethos are Castle in the Sky and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

Solarpunk Literature

Perhaps the richest source of Solarpunk material can be found in literature, which has always consistently expanded the boundaries of any punk movement. Like all movements before it, the Solarpunk theme and universe are mainly explored through fiction. A genre that allows the imagination to run through endless possibilities, it is the platform that gives birth to new and innovative ideas. Literature is the source of many punk material due to its rich nature. Through literature, Solarpunk ideas have been shared and interpreted into the set of understandings that define the movement today.

Solarpunk literature was born amidst the dystopic movements of steampunk and cyberpunk. It ended up branching out into its own entity due to its optimistic outlook. In line with that, it explores a semi-utopic future with fantastical elements that exaggerate more positive advancements that allow for its ideals to prosper. Within the Solarpunk realm, this of course includes a complete integration of technology and nature. For example, solar-powered air transportation which is made entirely out of biodegradable materials. These ideas may seem outlandish and impossible, and yet, nothing is impossible in fiction. Solarpunk loves reality, but can you blame them for indulging in fiction when the future looks so bleak?

Some of the most popular examples of Solarpunk literature include The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson as well as Orion Shall Rise by Poul Anderson. These stories explore the relationship between man, nature and technology. Though written in different decades, these stories are perhaps more relevant today than they were then.

"We're Solarpunks because the only other options are denial or despair."

Solarpunk poses an interesting and new take on the problems we are facing in this century. The beauty of Solarpunk lies in its non-restrictive and varying aesthetics. All parts of this movement aim towards achieving a bright and welcoming future for everyone. From fashion to music, as long as it follows the core values, anyone can be a part of this positive movement. Adam Flynn of ASU's Hieroglyph writes, "We're Solarpunks because the only other options are denial or despair." The heartbeat of Solarpunk is looking to the future with optimism and people moving towards more conscious consumption. To make a choice. The choice to move towards a more sustainable lifestyle, the choice to resist the current lifestyle and the choice to make a change for a better future. With all the existing troubling topics that we are bombarded with every day, Solarpunk provides solace in its hope for a better future.

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The Definitive Guide To SOLARPUNK: Fashion, Movies, Aesthetic & More

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We've all heard of Steampunk and Cyberpunk. Their iconic styles and bold images have always distinguished those who choose to stand apart from the status quo. In fact, Cyberpunk has become one of the most popular subcultures ever with the release of blockbuster movies like Blade Runner 2047 and the recent blockbuster video game Cyberpunk 2077.

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It can be helpful to organize your research, and you can refer back to it when writing your narrative. The link is in pink. :)

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"A Collection of Solar Futures"
This is a book example of future-think narrative, with a bit of history on solar power.

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by Joan Slonczewski - 1986

A combination of feminist SF and of hard-SF world-building, A Door Into Ocean follows the Sharers of Shora, a nation of women on a distant moon in the far future who are pacifists, highly advanced in biological sciences, and who reproduce by parthenogenesis-there are no males-and tells of the conflicts that erupt when a neighboring civilization decides to develop their ocean world, and send in an army.

"By the time the conflict... has moved to center stage, you not only know the antagonists intimately, you care passionately about the outcome... The story deals with the efforts of decent people on both sides to see beyond their culture-bound definitions of humanity."
-New York Times Book Review

Nausicca of the Valley of the Wind is a manga by master animator Hayao Miyazaki, and he turned this story into an excellent movie. I recommend seeing it, along with everything else Miyazaki has created.

Nausicaä, a young princess, has an empathic bond with the giant Ohmu insects and animals of every creed. She fights to create tolerance, understanding, and patience among empires that are fighting over the world's remaining precious natural resources.

by Kim Stanley Robinson - 1990

2065: In a world that has rediscovered harmony with nature, the village of El Modena, California, is an ecotopia in the making. Kevin Claiborne, a young builder who has grown up in this "green" world, now finds himself caught up in the struggle to preserve his community's idyllic way of life from the resurgent forces of greed and exploitation.

Pacific Edge is the final book in Kim Stanley Robinson's Three Californias Trilogy, so you might want to check out the first two books before reading this one.

Three Californias Trilogy
The Wild Shore
The Gold Coast
Pacific Edge

"Through a blend of dirt-under-fingernails naturalism and lyrical magical realism, Robinson invites us to share his characters' intensely personal, intensely loyal attachment to what they have. The result is a bittersweet utopia that may shame you into entertaining new hope for the future."
―The New York Times Book Review

In this underrated book, Professor Radicand Jones has survived climate change, pandemic, and peak oil-but can she protect her sister's airship flock from pirates, and hunt down their shadowy sponsors before the aether drives her mad?

Hubert Vernon Rudolph Clayton Irving Wilson Alva Anton Jeff Harley Timothy Curtis Cleveland Cecil Ollie Edmund Eli Wiley Marvin Ellis Espinoza―known to his friends as Hubert, Etc―was too old to be at that Communist party.

But after watching the breakdown of modern society, he really has nowhere left to be, except amongst the dregs of disaffected youth who party all night and heap scorn on the sheep they see on the morning commute. After falling in with Natalie, an ultra-rich heiress trying to escape the clutches of her repressive father, the two decide to give up fully on formal society and walk away.

After all, now that anyone can design and print the basic necessities of life―food, clothing, shelter―from a computer, there seems to be little reason to toil within the system.

However, it's still a dangerous world out there, the empty lands wrecked by climate change, dead cities hollowed out by industrial flight, shadows hiding predators animal and human alike. Still, when the initial pioneer walkaways flourish, more people join them. Then the walkaways discover the one thing the ultra-rich have never been able to buy: how to beat death. Now it's war-a war that will turn the world upside down.

"Thrilling and unexpected... A truly visionary techno-thriller that not only depicts how we might live tomorrow, but asks why we don't already."
-Kirkus (starred review)

A sensible young nobleman and his sister live in an experimental medieval village. Sealed inside this biodome since infancy, Leaf and Willow have been groomed by The Code to build a sustainable world, one devoid of Outsider interference. One that believes death will give way to life.

All is ideal until their father bequeaths a family secret with his dying breath, placing an invisible crown of power on Leaf's head... A death Leaf believes is the result of murder. Now everyone in their quiet town is suspect. Risking banishment, the siblings search for clues, leading them to Fillion Nichols, an Outsider with a shocking connection to their family. Their encounter launches Fillion into a psychological battle with his turbulent past as he rushes to decode the many dangerous secrets that bind them together, a necessity if they're all to survive.

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16 Best Solarpunk Books - The Best Sci Fi Books

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It's hard not to be overwhelmed with pessimism and a sense of impending doom one feels when looking at the current state of fractious politics and lack of action to battle climate change. Solarpunk is a rebellion against all that. It's environmentally-focused, optimistic but practical, not "la la let's dance in the sun amidst the [...]

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Various Artists : Solarpunk : A Possible Future

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The below was compiled by solarpunks.net the short link for sharing is solarpunks.net/Ref

Last update: 06.Feb.18

Solarpunk is a movement in speculative fiction, art, fashion and activism that seeks to answer and embody the question "what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?" The aesthetics of solarpunk merge the practical with the beautiful, the well-designed with the green and wild, the bright and colorful with the earthy and solid. Solarpunk can be utopian, just optimistic, or concerned with the struggles en route to a better world - but never dystopian. As our world roils with calamity, we need solutions, not warnings. Solutions to live comfortably without fossil fuels, to equitably manage scarcity and share abundance, to be kinder to each other and to the planet we share. At once a vision of the future, a thoughtful provocation, and an achievable lifestyle.

In progress...

We have received DMs from quite a few people who wanted to get into solarpunk but didn't find it very accessible after looking at the results of the google search.

The links below are an attempt to open up the optics of the solarpunk community for newcomers and others looking for references . A lot of the early discussions happened on tumblr from 2014 onward after Miss Olivia Louise's character concept post took off - with a core community of stewards who know who they are.

What follows is not meant to be an exhaustive list but hopefully will increasingly become one. We're also aware that we are missing almost all of the art references from this list. :(

We included our first post from 2012 at solarpunks.tumblr.com
Please get in touch with art references as a lot of content has lost their attribution - Jay

!!LINKS ARE CHRONOLOGICAL!!

From Steampunk to Solarpunk
https://republicofthebees.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/from-steampunk-to-solarpunk/ "A major difference between solarpunk and steampunk is that solarpunk ideas, and solarpunk technologies, need not remain imaginary, and I indulge a hope of someday living in a solarpunk world."
French solar blimp
https://www.wired.com/2009/07/french-solar-blimp/ *FRENCH KIDS IN engineering school. Man, that gobboon is just the solarpunk awesomest." - Bruce Sterling
Figuring out "Solarpunk"?
http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?219971-Figuring-out-quot-Solarpunk-quot "So I've had an idea (not an original one of course, but one that hasn't had a lot of use) that I think has lots of mileage; solarpunk."
Nova Albion Steampunk Exhibition
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1003/S00187.htm "no doubt, the embryonic seeds of solarpunk are being planted."
Antologia SOLARPUNK Guidelines (Brazil)
https://www.scribd.com/document/64379041/Antologia-SOLARPUNK-Guidelines Depois da Vaporpunk (2010) e da Dieselpunk (2011), 2012 será o ano da Solarpunk !Ao contrário das duas antologias punks anteriores, na Solarpunk não julgamos necessário enfatizaro elemento "punk". O "solar" agora parece mais importante.
Solarpunk
http://editoradraco.com/2013/01/11/solarpunk-historias-ecologicas-e-fantasticas-em-um-mundo-sustentavel/
"a Brazilian anthology of solarpunk literature whose opening lines were roughly translated in an Australian article in 2014. "Now imagine large space sailboats driven by solar radiation, production of biofuels via nanotechnology, the advent of photosynthetic humans, and, as there is no perfect society, even terrorism against corrupt businesses and governments. Welcome to the bright green world of solarpunk." - The New Utopians

Lego Solarpunk
https://www.flickr.com/groups/solarpunk/
"Welcome to a world run by solar energy."

Todo In Portland: Weird Shit Con 2012
http://technoccult.net/archives/2012/08/01/todo-in-portland-weird-shit-con-2012/ "weirdos / Solarpunk / robots / machine vision / technologies disruptive to society and government"
On the Need for New Futures
http://solarpunks.tumblr.com/post/27525726746/on-the-need-for-new-futures "We are starved for visions of the future that will sustain us, and give us something to hope for, ideas of life beyond the rusted chrome of yestermorrow or nightmare realms of radiated men eating the flesh of other radiated men."
Low-Power/No-Power #LoNo Computing (PDF)
https://charlesreid1.com/w/images/f/f1/LonoComputing.pdf
The Analog vs. The Digital
http://worsethandetroit.co.uk/post/27901477141 "The term for Reid's proposal, above, (and the title of the essay it comes from) is "Solarpunk." I'm not sure it represents any real revolutionary shift, nothing of a movement yet, but it does provide a valuable new perspective, a paradigm and a vocabulary through which to describe one possible future."
BCN SOLARPUNK || ART SCIENCE & IMAGINATION - Monthly events begin
https://www.meetup.com/es-ES/solarpunk/events/past/?scroll=true#past "BCN SOLARPUNK || ART SCIENCE & IMAGINATION is an interdisciplinary laboratory for experimentation and discussion about the artistic, political, social, economic, ecological, technological and geopolitical changes."
Here's a thing I've had around in my head for a while!
http://missolivialouise.tumblr.com/post/94374063675/heres-a-thing-ive-had-around-in-my-head-for-a "Aesthetically my vision of solarpunk is very similar to steampunk, but with electronic technology, and an Art Nouveau veneer."
Solarpunk: Notes toward a manifesto
http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/2014/09/solarpunk-notes-toward-a-manifesto/ "We're solarpunks because the only other options are denial or despair."
#solarpunk for socialists
https://twitter.com/thejaymo/status/433710287187767297 #solarpunk for socialists #fusionpunk for fascists#infrastructure #politics
what the heck is solar punk?
http://txwatson.tumblr.com/post/97088763563/solarpunk-thoughts-accessibility I love the idea of Solarpunk planners and designers and architects keeping in mind as a real priority making their spaces deliberately pleasant, comfortable and helpful for people with disabilities
A Users Manual For A Post-nihilist Praxis
https://syntheticzero.net/2014/09/18/a-users-manual-for-a-post-nihilist-praxis/ An ecologistics capable of producing an infrastructural politics;the deployment of a less naively optimistic (dark) solarpunk libertarian technics; the speculative prospect of transpessimism; the rediscovery and elevation of an ethic of care that might become a generalised Buen Vivir; the active production of autonomous subjectivations that exist outside the constrictions of psychological orthodoxies; and the transcorporeal sapience of machinic coexistence.
Near-future Scenarios for Humans and Planet Earth
http://dankoboldt.com/near-future-scenarios-humans/ I discovered a young sub-genre that is reaching for a more positive, sustainable, and realistic view of humanity's near-future.
SOLARPUNK:
http://www.solar.org.au/sp-feature/solarpunk/ In this nascent stage, solarpunk appears as a loose collection of ideologies, manifestos, and desires for a sustainable, achievable future. https://solarpunkfarmer.wordpress.com/2014/11/27/what-is-solarpunk/ Whether its post apocalyptic or a smooth transition through energy decent, the imagined future is positive and happy. I imagine this future as having resolved any racism, sexism or religious bias. So solarpunk culture would include all races, religions, sex's, including those with disabilities.
Solarpunk: a new movement sees the future in a positive light
http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2014/11/10/4122309.htm "IMAGINE A SUSTAINABLE world, driven by clean and renewable energy. Now imagine large space sailboats driven by solar radiation, production of biofuels via nanotechnology, the advent of photosynthetic humans, and, as there is no perfect society, even terrorism against corrupt businesses and governments. Welcome to the bright green world of solarpunk."
[Review] Solarpunk (Portuguese)
http://www.vortexcultural.com.br/literatura/resenha-solarpunk/ "instead of retrofuturism, the theme turns completely to the future. Not an alternative future, but a possible future."
SOLARPUNK É A ESPERANÇA DO FUTURO EM NOSSO PLANETA (Portuguese)
https://coletivofreakgeeks.wordpress.com/2014/12/01/solarpunk-e-a-esperanca-do-futuro-em-nosso-planeta/ There are several forms of expression of the Solarpunk movement, as in architecture, in which stained glass, solar panels and vegetable coverings take hold, as well as in fashion and literature, with reference in Art Nouveau.
7 reasons why solarpunk is the most important speculative fiction movement in the last 20 years
http://kdhume.tumblr.com/post/108932813682/7-reasons-why-solarpunk-is-the-most-important "1 . It's hopeful. Solarpunk doesn't require an apocalypse. It's a world in which humans haven't destroyed ourselves and our environment, where we've pulled back just in time to stop the slow destruction of our planet. We've learned to use science wisely, for the betterment of ourselves and our planet. We're no longer overlords. We're caretakers. We're gardeners." http://eco-fiction.com/interview-with-adam-flynn-on-the-solarpunk-movement/ I don't think anyone "owns" solarpunk, but I certainly feel like one of its stewards. As to whether it's a 'movement,' I think it definitely has the potential to be one, but I think we're another year out from it really being there.
Interview with Adam Flynn on Solarpunk
http://www.sherylkaleo.com/solarpunk/ TAKE the POLL! What do YOU think should be done with the domains solarpunk.com and solarpunk.org? Magazine? Bulletin board? Sandbox? http://www.sherylkaleo.com/why-solarpunk/ "we need more artists, more writers, more innovators to envision how and where and with what do we transition this world of ours into positive realism, as first coined on the tumbler group."
Solarpunk

Why Solarpunk?

DIY Solar Sail Boat. Solar Punk style

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The below was compiled by solarpunks.net the short link for sharing is solarpunks.net/Ref Last update: 06.Feb.18 Solarpunk is a movement in speculative fiction, art, fashion and activism that seeks to answer and embody the question "what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?"

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Hope for the Future

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Discover why covering canals with solar panels is a power move while seeing a great example of creative innovation.

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Why Covering Canals With Solar Panels Is a Power Move

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Peanut butter and jelly. Hall & Oates. Now there's a duo that could literally and figuratively be even more powerful: solar panels and canals. What if instead of leaving canals open, letting the sun evaporate the water away, we covered them with panels that would both shade the precious liquid and hoover up solar energy?

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"Ella the Electron" is a story made through teacher-student imaginative collaboration! While it is not a futures narrative, it is inspirational, especially in its creativity. Enjoy!

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Step into an imagined urban community where Heloria uses solar to do something amazing in this comic. The link is in pink. ;)

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The AuREUS system is an evolution for walls/windows, and uses technology synthesized from upcycled crop waste to absorb stray UV light from sunlight and convert it to clean renewable electricity. Another example of creative innovation! The link is in pink. :)

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Winning the inaugural Sustainability Award of the James Dyson Award 2020, 27-year-old Carvey Ehren Maigue is the mind behind AuREUS System Technology. The interview with Carvey Maigue, videos, and images are linked in pink. :)

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From Keisha Howard's TED Talk:

"I've been thinking about CyberPunk a little more deeply, and once you get past all those pretty lights, CyberPunk is really about a world where people are suffering, it's dystopic, it's apocalyptic. There are people that are living in a way that we don't want to live... I started thinking about that and I don't know that I really want the future to look like a CyberPunk dystopia. As much as I love CyberPunk, this isn't the future that I want to look forward to... are we really hurtling towards a CyberPunk future becoming reality? That's something that really bothers me... I am very inspired by speculative fiction. I'm inspired by what people can come up with their imaginations.... People come up with ideas that doesn't exist but end up being a part of reality later.
Fiction is the foundation
for some of the greatest inventions that we have today..."

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Imagining a SolarPunk Future | Keisha Howard | TEDxOgden

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Drawn Futures: Arizona 2045 is a science-based comic book for 5th through 8th  grade students from Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination. Created by award-winning comics authors and advised by ASU sustainability scholar Dr. Paul Hirt, this original story envisions the near future of Arizona’s energy systems.

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Drawn Futures: Arizona 2045 is a science-based comic book for 5 th through 8 th grade students from Arizona State University's Center for Science and the Imagination. Created by award-winning comics authors and advised by ASU sustainability scholar Dr. Paul Hirt, this original story envisions the near future of Arizona's energy systems.

In an increasingly networked and visual culture, comic books and graphic novels are important tools for bolstering literacy, communicating with diverse audiences, and creating a space to discuss complex scientific and social topics in a meaningful and accessible way. Drawn Futures: Arizona 2045 is designed with these goals in mind and aligns with Arizona State Standards for the 6th Grade science curriculum.
Spanish Edition

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Drawn Futures: Arizona 2045 | Center for Science and the Imagination

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Drawn Futures: Arizona 2045 is a science-based comic book for 5th through 8th grade students from Arizona State University's Center for Science and the Imagination. Created by award-winning comics authors and advised by ASU sustainability scholar Dr. Paul Hirt, this original story envisions the near future [...]

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Teams imagine solar powered art installations for locations all around the world using functioning solar technologies.

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Plane of Water by Zsuzsa Péter incorporates organic photovoltaic (OPV) solar to generate 40 MWh each year. The artwork provides additional social co-benefits including shaded public space, water harvesting, and urban gardens. A shortlisted entry to the Land Art Generator Initiative 2022 (LAGI 2022) design competition for Mannheim in partnership with BUGA 23.

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The Land Art Generator (LAGI) brings together artists, architects, scientists, landscape architects, engineers, and others in a first of its kind collaboration. The goal of the Land Art Generator is to see to the design and construction of public art installations that uniquely combine aesthetics with utility-scale clean energy generation.

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Scientists are imagining new ways to generate electricity from windows—in offices, homes, car’s sunroof, or even smartphones

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New solar panel technologies are set to transform the global solar energy landscape. Some of these promising technologies are already in the advanced stages of development, and could hit the market fairly soon. With these innovations, solar is no longer going to require extensive land parcels or unsightly roof spaces. (Aesthetically appealing and highly efficient solar shingles, for example, are already creating attractive solar roofs.)

What are transparent solar panels?

Photovoltaic glass is probably the most cutting-edge new solar panel technology that promises to be a game-changer in expanding the scope of solar. These are transparent solar panels that can literally generate electricity from windows-in offices, homes, car's sunroof, or even smartphones. Blinds are another part of a building's window that can generate electricity (we will discuss it in a later section).

Researchers at Michigan State University (MSU) originally created the first fully transparent solar concentrator in 2014. This clear solar panel could turn virtually any glass sheet or window into a PV cell. By 2020, the researchers in the U.S. and Europe have already achieved full transparency for the solar glass.

These transparent solar panels can be easily deployed in a variety of settings, ranging from skyscrapers with large windows to a mobile device such as a phone, a laptop, or an e-reader. As these solar power windows can simply replace the traditional glass windows in offices and homes, the technology holds the potential to virtually turn every building in the United States and the world into a solar producer.

How do solar panel windows work?

A transparent solar panel is essentially a counterintuitive idea because solar cells must absorb sunlight (photons) and convert them into power (electrons). When a solar glass is transparent, the sunlight will pass through the medium and defeat the purpose of utilizing sunlight. However, this new solar panel technology is changing the way solar cells absorb light.

The cell selectively harnesses a portion of the solar spectrum that is invisible to the naked eye, while allowing the normal visible light to pass through. To achieve this technological wonder, the researchers have developed the transparent luminescent solar concentrator (TLSC) rather than trying to do the impossible by creating a transparent photovoltaic glass cell.

The TLSC is composed of organic salts that are designed to absorb specific invisible UV and infrared light wavelengths, which then glow (luminesce) as another invisible wavelength. This new wavelength is then guided to the edge of the window plastic, which thin PV solar cell strips convert it into electricity.

Once the mass production begins for transparent solar panels, researchers estimate that the TLSC should be able to deliver an efficiency of about 10%. This may not appear to be an earth-shattering number, but on a national or global scale, when almost every window in a home or office building consists of clear solar panels, the results can be transformative.

As the transparent solar panels cost comes down with their mass production and deployment, this non-intrusive technology can be scaled right from commercial and industrial applications to handheld consumer devices, while remaining very affordable.

Types of transparent solar panels

Just the way solar roof panels are currently produced using different technologies (Tesla's solar shingles and other technologies), solar windows are also being developed using different techniques. The two major types of transparent solar panels include partial and full transparent panels.

Partially transparent solar panels

A German manufacturer, Heliatek Gmb, has developed this partially clear solar panel, which can absorb about 60 percent of the sunlight it receives. Compared to the conventional solar PV cells, the partially transparent solar panels have a lower efficiency at 7.2%. However, solar power generation can be increased by adjusting the balance between the sunlight that is transmitted and absorbed.

For instance, in south-facing glass buildings, it is often important to reduce the transmitted light (many such office buildings already use tinted glass). In these locations, the partially transparent solar panel can work very well.

Fully transparent solar panels

As described in the beginning of this report, researchers at MSU have already achieved a breakthrough to produce fully transparent photovoltaic glass panels that resemble regular glass. Researchers estimate the efficiency of these fully transparent solar panels to be as high as 10% once their commercial production commences.

It's vital to understand here that when it comes to solar panel windows, efficiency of the panel is not the be all and end all. In practical terms, a less efficient solar window only means that the window has to be larger in size compared to the more efficient panel in order to generate the same amount of electricity.

Once fully transparent solar panels get integrated into large windows in buildings, their lower efficiency is bound to be overcompensated by their potential scale of deployment.

Solar panel blinds: An easy-to-implement solar window technology

Solar panel blinds are a supplement to transparent solar glass/panels when using the window to generate electricity. Solar power panels are designed to harvest sunlight to produce energy, while the essential function of window blinds is to block direct sun's rays from entering inside.

Solar panel blinds are cleverly combining these two divergent functions. An innovative startup called SolarGaps has introduced solar panel blinds, which it claims can cut down energy costs by up to 70 percent. For every 10 sq. ft. of window space, these solar window blinds can generate 100 watts of power (you could roughly power three laptops with this much electricity).

These solar blinds can be installed either inside or outside, and you can control their angle and positioning using an app that will also inform you of the energy generation figures. It includes a setting to automatically optimize the angle of the blinds according to the position of the sun.

Pioneers in transparent solar panel research and manufacturing

Researchers at Michigan State University and MIT as well as manufacturers such as Ubiquitous Energy, Physee, and Brite Solar are pioneers in promoting this new solar panel technology.

Ubiquitous Energy

Ubiquitous Energy, in partnership with a leading glass manufacturer NSG Group, is developing Ubiquitous's unique ClearView Power technology to integrate transparent solar panels into architectural glass windows. ClearView Power's transparent solar coating can be directly applied to building windows at the time of the normal glass making process.

The technology also enhances energy efficiency of the buildings through blocking of infrared solar heat. When combined with solar energy generation through clear solar panels, it can lead to net-zero energy buildings. The company has already announced that ClearView Power's transparent solar cells have reached an electricity conversion efficiency of 9.8%.

Physee

Physee is a European manufacturer that has introduced an advanced product called PowerWindow. In fact, it is the only currently installed transparent solar panel in the world right now (covering 300 sq. ft. in a Dutch bank building).

Physee's PowerWindow makes use of small solar panels that are installed along the window pane edges to generate power. While these solar windows are unable to be a standalone power source for buildings yet, the company is confident of rapid improvements in the scale and efficiency of its transparent panels.

PowerWindows serve as the building blocks for " SmartSkin," the clear photovoltaic glass that the company is promoting as the "future-proof glass façade for next-generation sustainable buildings." SmartSkin can work autonomously to sense, power, and regulate the climate inside the building using intelligent systems.

The future of transparent solar technology

The potential to generate renewable, clean energy from the sun is enormous with transparent solar panels, considering the number of skyscrapers and buildings already in existence or under construction with a massive amount of glass surface .

According to Richard Lunt, the Johansen Crosby Endowed Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at MSU, highly transparent solar cells represent the "wave of the future" for new solar panel technologies.

Lunt says that these clear solar panels have a similar power-generation potential as rooftop solar, along with additional applications to improve the efficiency of buildings, cars and mobile devices. Lunt and his team estimate that the U.S. alone has about 5 to 7 billion square meters of glass surface at present. (Just in the last 10 years, as much as 682 million sq. ft. of office space has been added in the U.S.).

With this much of glass surface to cover, transparent solar panel technology has the potential to meet about 40 percent of the country's annual energy demand. This potential is nearly the same as that of rooftop solar. When both these technologies are deployed complimentarily, it could help meet nearly 100 percent of the U.S. electricity needs if we also improve energy storage.

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Transparent Solar Panels: Reforming Future Energy Supply

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New solar panel technologies are set to transform the global solar energy landscape. Some of these promising technologies are already in the advanced stages of development, and could hit the market fairly soon. With these innovations, solar is no longer going to require extensive land parcels or unsightly roof spaces.

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Teachers - Here are resources for supporting students in imagining preferred futures!

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Climate Action Almanac Lesson Plans - Center for Science and the Imagination

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By Nicole Oster, PhD Student Learning, Literacies, TechnologiesMary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation These lesson plans are drawn from the Climate Action Almanac, a collection of speculative

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Created by Annie Holub
INTRODUCTION

For Teachers

This Solar Tomorrows Project was designed by Annie Holub over the summer of 2023 as part of the Solar Tomorrows Fellowship at Arizona State University's Center for Science and the Imagination and Center for Energy and Society. The goal is to use the work created by these centers in two books of fiction and nonfiction-Cities of Light (2021) and (2019) to help Arizona students become more educated about the possibilities of a solar-powered future. The fellowship was funded by EarthShare, a goal to educate Arizonans about the possibilities of solar energy-to focus on the impact it can have on people and societies, and not just on its technological aspects.

This project is a 3-week time commitment (or about 16 class days) that gets students in grades 9-12 reading and analyzing short science fiction and short essays about what a solar-powered future could look like. The students then create their own stories, art, and essays that describe their own visions for solar-powered futures. We want students to really think through what could be from a perspective of hope and optimism, while also considering the unintended consequences and the give-and-take that any major change in culture and society can create.

Students can then share their stories, essays, and art on social media using the hashtag #solartomorrows, and submit their work to contests or local publications.

This project hits the following Arizona Department of Education English Language Arts (ELA) Standards (8 standards total for each grade level band):

Grades 9-10
Reading Standards for Literature: Key Ideas and Details
RL2: Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.

RL3: Analyze how complex characters (e.g., those with multiple or conflicting motivations) develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme.

Reading Standards for Literature: Craft and Structure

RL6: Analyze how points of view and/or cultural experiences are reflected in works of literature, drawing from a variety of literary texts.

Writing: Text Types and Purposes

W2: Informative/Explanatory (essay analyzing stories and/or essay describing world choices)

W3: Narrative (sci fi story about a solar-powered world)

Writing: Production and Distribution of Writing

W4: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

Writing: Research to Build and Present Knowledge

W9: Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.

Speaking and Listening: Comprehension and Collaboration

SL1: Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one‐on‐one, in groups, and teacher‐led) with diverse partners on grades 9-10 topics, texts, and issues, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

Grades 11-12
Reading Standards for Literature: Key Ideas and Details
RL2: Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text.

RL3: Analyze the impact of the author's choices regarding how to develop and connect elements of a story or drama.

Reading Standards for Literature: Craft and Structure

RL6: Using a variety of genres, analyze how the narrative point of view impacts the implicit and explicit meanings in a text

Writing: Text Types and Purposes

W2: Informative/Explanatory (essay analyzing stories and/or essay describing world choices)

W3: Narrative (sci fi story about a solar-powered world)

Writing: Production and Distribution of Writing

W4: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

Writing: Research to Build and Present Knowledge

W9: Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.

Speaking and Listening: Comprehension and Collaboration

SL1: Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one‐on‐one, in groups, and teacher‐led) with diverse partners on grades 11-12 topics, texts, and issues, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

INTRODUCTION

For Students

In 2018 and 2020, the Center for Science and the Imagination and Center for Energy and Society at Arizona State University held "hackathons" with science fiction writers, artists, scientists, and engineers to create two collections of essays and stories about what a solar-powered world of the future could be like. A "hackathon" is, in the world of computer programming, a short, focused workshop where the goal is to create a new program by the end. Wikipedia explains that "The word "hackathon" is a portmanteau [blend word] of the words 'hack' and 'marathon,' where 'hack' is used in the sense of exploratory programming, not its alternate meaning as a reference to breaching computer security." But instead of designing hardware or a software programs, the participants in the ASU hackathons were designing visions of the future, explained through stories, essays, and art. The results are two books: The Weight of Light and Cities of Light.

This project is designed to give you the opportunity to engage in the same hackathon process as the writers, artists, scientists, and engineers did. It's your turn to think creatively and critically about what a solar-powered future might look like. You will inhabit and be a part of creating the future world, so imagining the future and what it could look like before it happens is incredibly important. "We're all futurists," writes Susanne Forchheimer, a researcher at the Institute for the Future. "Whether it's planning for our own personal lives or participating in strategic decisions at our work-we should all feel like the future is something we have agency and responsibility to impact and change."

"Imagination is the cognitive faculty we use when we contend with the future," write Ruth Wylie and Ed Finn, researchers at ASU's Center for Science and the Imagination, in an article about the hackathon process. "To change our relationship with the future is fundamentally a question of how we might change our imagination about the future. In order to enact a new relationship with the future, we must engage in imaginative practices and attempt to enhance our collective capacity for imagination."

In this project, you will use your imagination to answer the driving question: What could a solar-powered future look like?

In this project, you will get to imagine your own solar-powered future world. Like the participants in the hackathon, you'll be given parameters to work with to help spark and guide your imagination. You'll get the opportunity to read some of the essays and stories that the ASU participants created, and then create your own stories, essays, and even maybe visual art that describe your imagined future.

But don't let their ideas limit your imagination! We hope that you come up with even more and even better ideas about what a solar-powered future could be like. The future is yours to imagine.

PROJECT CALENDAR

Day 1: Why is it important to think about the future?

WARM UP:

Give students this Anticipation Guide

DISCUSSION:

Once students have filled out the Anticipation Guide, use the same questions for a 4 Corners discussion:

I think about my energy use

I think about the future often

Thinking about the future makes me hopeful.

I will have a role in the way society changes in the future.

Everyone should have access to energy (electricity, fuel), even if they can't pay for it

If time, pair students up or place them in groups of 3.

Pass out a Conversation Card to each group.

Give each group about 30 seconds to discuss the question on the card.

Have groups pass their card to the next group (if they get a repeat, pass it along until they get a new one)

Continue until all groups have had all cards

READING:

Read the " What Exactly Is Futures Thinking? " blog post from the Institute for the Future.

EXIT TICKET:

1. Pick one of the questions from today and write more about your response to that question.

2. Define Futures Thinking in your own words

Standard: SL1
Day 2: Where is solar power?

WARM UP:

Ask students:

Where is solar power located in your community?

What is already solar-powered in your community?

Do homes or businesses around your school or home have panels? What else can you find? Can you see panels on Google Maps?

Are there solar-powered calculators in your school? Are there other things that can be solar-powered? What's the smallest? What's the biggest? What's the closest?

They can respond individually or in groups.

Give students about 10 minutes to think and search and make lists in response to the questions.

Ask students to share what they found

DISCUSSION:

After the class has created a list, ask students to share their findings. Create a class list on the board or on a digital board (e.g., Jamboard).

Think about these questions as a class:

1. Where is the most solar power?

2. Who owns the solar-powered things?

3. Where do we NOT see solar power?

4. What could be solar-powered, but isn't?

READING:

Have copies of " Choices," by ASU energy scholar Clark A. Miller, available for students to read.
Link to audio recording
Before reading: Tell students they're about to read a short essay about why Phoenix looks the way it does. Think about this question: Why do cities look the way they do? (For students outside of Phoenix: Have you ever been to Phoenix? What were your impressions of the city?)

After reading: 3 A's protocol: (I usually take out "assumptions" step because that can trip students up; more effective to get right to these 3 and can come back to assumptions later, depending on students and time)

What do you AGREE with?

What do you want to ARGUE with?

What do you ASPIRE to?

EXIT TICKET:

3-2-1 Summarizer

3 things you learned today about solar power

2 questions you have about solar power or things you are wondering about

1 connection you can make to the discussion/reading

Standard: SL1
Day 3: How can science fiction/storytelling help us imagine the future?

WARM UP:

Ask students: What is science fiction? Have you read any science fiction books or stories, or seen any science fiction movies?

DISCUSSION:

Students will use the SOLEprotocol to think through the question: How can science fiction/storytelling help us imagine the future?

READING:

Zach Berkson, " What Is The Purpose of Science Fiction Stories?"

EXIT TICKET:

According to the writer of the blog post, what IS the purpose of sci fi stories? Does the argument in this short piece align with what you found in your SOLE group?
Standard: SL1
Days 4-5: How can science fiction/storytelling help us imagine the future?

WARM UP:

Ask students: What do you know about Houston, San Antonio, and/or bats?

READING:

Listen to "Scent of the Freetails" podcast/follow along with text

(Note: This podcast is 70 minutes long. You may need to break up listening across 2 class periods)

Complete Graphic Organizer 9-10 or Graphic Organizer 11-12

EXIT TICKET:

What kind of future is presented in this story?
Standards: RL2, RL3
Days 6-7: How can science fiction/storytelling help us imagine the future?
2 days if students read in class-one class period for reading, one for discussion
WARM UP:

Ask students: Have you ever been to Chicago or another bigger city in a much colder place? How are the energy needs in a big city in a colder climate different than a smaller city in a warmer climate?

READING:

Read/Listen to Paolo Bacigalupi's short story "Efficiency":

Students complete Graphic Organizer 9-10 or Graphic Organizer 11-12 as they read.

EXIT TICKET

Options: Create a Venn diagram to compare/contrast both stories ("The Scent of the Freetails" and "Efficiency") OR What kind of future is presented in this story?
Standards: RL2, RL3
Day 7/8: What could a solar-powered future look like?

WARM UP:

So far we've read 2 stories that imagine very different solar-powered futures. What ideas have you liked so far? What ideas do you not like? Why?

READING:

Explain to students that today they'll be doing a Jigsaw activity with more stories.

Form groups of 3-5 students. This is the students' home group.

Within each group, each person chooses one more story to read. Totally ok if more than one person chooses the same story, but all 3 stories need to have a reader!

Students read their chosen story and start the Graphic Organizer 9-10 or Graphic Organizer 11-12 for their story.

Once all students have read their story, students find other students reading the same story as the one they picked. Discuss and continue completing the graphic organizer.

Students go back to their home group. Use Jigsaw Graphic Organizer as each student teaches their group about the story they read.

Home group compares/contrasts the stories. As a group, discuss: What kinds of solar futures have we seen? Which one sounds the most promising to you? Which one seems the least promising? Why?

EXIT TICKET:
(Instead of exit ticket, you can choose to assign a longer explanatory essay assignment)
Grades 9-10: How are the perspectives and cultural experiences using solar power different/similar in each of the stories you read?

Grades 11-12: How do the different narrators' perspectives on solar power across the 3 stories impact the reader's perspectives on solar power?
Explanatory essay assignment, Grades 9-10 Explanatory essay assignment, Grades 11-12 Standards: RL2, RL3, RL6, W2, W9
Day 8/9: What could a solar-powered future look like?

WARM UP:

Now that you've read several models, you can start creating your own future world. What ideas do you already have for the story you're going to write?

ASSIGNMENT:

Students will write a well-imagined science fiction story that presents a near future powered by solar energy:

This could take the a short story or a short film/tv episode- TV/media doesn't show people addressing climate change, so you could start a trend!.

OPTIONAL

A visual that depicts the world

An essay that explains the choices you have made in imagining the future world (for example, write a speech or news story given in the future that uses current events as basis for future)

ACTIVITY:

Use story cubes to set parameters

Use World-Building Graphic Organizer to map out some ideas.

EXIT TICKET:

What ideas do you have for your story?
Standards: W3, W5
Day 9-11: What could a solar-powered future look like?

WARM-UP:

Think about a community you are a part of. What are some problems that community faces? Could solar energy help address any of those problems?

ACTIVITY:

Hopefully by today you have some parameters to start creating your story, like who the characters will be and the setting for your story. It's time to think about possible scenarios that could create the conflict in your story. We're going to use a futures thinking exercise called the 2×2 Future Scenarios Planning Matrix to help us think through possible scenarios. This exercise is intended to help shake us out of stereotypical ways of thinking about the future. This will take 2 class sessions: 1 to brainstorm uncertainties and 1 to run through the various scenarios of what could happen.

Step 1: In a small group, think about the things that are UNCERTAIN about a solar-powered future. For example, it is certain that it will get hotter. But what is UNCERTAIN is that we don't know if that means people will leave places like Phoenix because of the heat. It is certain that we will continue to use energy. But what is UNCERTAIN is how we will use it and where it will come from. Create a list of UNCERTAINTIES, as many as you can think of.

Step 2: Rank those uncertainties in order of their level of uncertainty and level of importance. For example, you might decide that it's really important to think about how many people will be living in an urban area and whether people have cheap access to solar power. There are no right answers here-just what your group thinks is super important and uncertain.

Step 3: Pick 2 things that are important but uncertain.

Step 4: On your 2×2 grid, place your uncertainties-what would be the maximum and minimum for each? Then in each quadrant, describe what that scenario would be like. Try not to have one of the variables have an endpoint where nothing is happening.

Step 5: Discuss as a group what scenario you think would be most compelling to explore for your story.

Step 6: Complete the Story Map Graphic Organizer, including the events that will shape your story.

EXIT TICKET:

What were your group's uncertainties? What scenario do you think you'll use for your story?
Standards: W3, W5
Day 11/12: What could a solar-powered future look like?

WARM UP:
Solar Art exploration
ACTIVITY:

Work on writing your story!

EXIT TICKET:

What did you work on today? Set a goal for what you want to accomplish by the end of the next class/work session.
Standards: W3, W5
Day 12/13: What could a solar-powered future look like?

WARM UP:
Solarpunk exploration
ACTIVITY:

Work on stories

EXIT TICKET:

A draft of your story is due next class session. What do you need to do to be ready to have a draft for class?
Standards: W3, W5
Day 13/14: What could a solar-powered future look like?

WARM UP:

Use the Narrative Writing & Revision Checklist to self-assess your story

ACTIVITY:

Revise and polish stories

EXIT TICKET:

What revisions do you want to make to your story?

Day 14/15: What could a solar-powered future look like?

WARM UP:

Find a song that mentions the sun or references solar energy. Find a way to work the song into your story.

ACTIVITY:

Continue to revise and polish stories

Next class session will be Exhibition Day, where you will share your work!

EXIT TICKET:

What do you still need to do to be ready to share your work?
Standards: W3, W5
Day 15/16: Exhibition Day! Share stories/visual art with class

End with Project Reflection

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackathon

https://www.iftf.org/insights/what-exactly-is-futures-thinking/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328721000975

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Solar Tomorrows Project Lesson Plan - Center for Science and the Imagination

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For Grades 9-12 Created by Annie Holub INTRODUCTION For Teachers This Solar Tomorrows Project was designed by Annie Holub over the summer of 2023 as part of the Solar Tomorrows Fellowship at